Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism

Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism
Supplements
to
Vigiliae Christianae
texts and studies of early christian life and language
Editors-in-Chief
D.T. Runia
G. Rouwhorst
Editorial Board
J. den Boeft
B.D. Ehrman
K. Greschat
J. Lössl
J. van Oort
C. Scholten
volume 160
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vcs

Alexander Yurievich Golitzin
Jewish Roots
of Eastern Christian Mysticism
Studies in Honor of Alexander Golitzin
Edited by
Andrei A. Orlov
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Golitzin, Alexander, honoree. | Orlov, Andrei A., 1960- editor.

Title: Jewish roots of Eastern Christian mysticism : studies in honor of Alexander
Golitzin / Andrei A. Orlov.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2020. | Series: Vigiliae Christianae,
supplements, 0920-623X ; volume160 | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020012733 (print) | LCCN 2020012734 (ebook) |
ISBN 9789004429529 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004429536 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Mysticism–Orthodox Eastern Church. | Orthodox Eastern
Church–Doctrines. | Mysticism–Judaism.
Classification: LCC BV5075 .J49 2020 (print) | LCC BV5075 (ebook) |
DDC 248.2/2–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012733
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012734
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface.
ISSN 0920-623x
ISBN 978-90-04-42952-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-42953-6 (e-book)
Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided
that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive,
Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents
Abbreviations xi
Notes on Contributors xv
Bibliography of the Works of Alexander Golitzin xvii
Compiled by Bogdan G. Bucur
Introduction 1
Andrei A. Orlov
Part 1
Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism and Mysticism
1 Traumatic Mysteries: Pathways of Mysticism among the Early

Christians 11
April D. DeConick
2 The Importance of the Parables of 1Enoch for Understanding the Son of

Man in the Four Gospels 52
Charles Gieschen
3 Driven Away with a Stick: The Femininity of the Godhead in y. Ber. 12d,
the Emergence of Rabbinic Modalist Orthodoxy, and the Christian
Binitarian Complex 66
Silviu N. Bunta
4 The Nativity of Ben Sira Reconsidered 85

James R. Russell
Part 2
Theophany and Transformation
5 Historical Memory and the Eschatological Vision of God’s Glory in

Irenaeus 99
Khaled Anatolios
viii contents
6 Flesh Invested with the Paternal Light: St Irenaeus on the

Transfiguration of the Body 118
John Behr
7 Flesh and Fire: Incarnation and Deification in Origen of

Alexandria 128
Charles M. Stang
8 St John Chrysostom in the West 144

Marcus Plested
9 Divine Light and Salvific Illumination in St. Symeon the New

Theologian’s Hymns of Divine Eros 156
John A. McGuckin
Part 3
Jewish Temple and Christian Liturgy
10 Leviathan’s Knot: The High Priest’s Sash as a Cosmological Symbol 177

Andrei A. Orlov
11 Moses as the First Priest-Gnostikos in the Works of Evagrius of

Pontus 202
Robin Darling Young
12 Holy Sound: Preaching as Divine Song in Late Antique Syriac

Tradition 226
Susan Ashbrook Harvey
13 The Lord Himself, One Lord, One Power: Jewish and Christian
Perspectives on Isaiah 63:9 and Daniel 7:13 240
Bogdan G. Bucur
Part 4
Pseudo-Dionysius, Plato, and Proclus
14 Revisiting the Christian Platonism of Pseudo-Dionysius 267

István Perczel
contents ix
15 Individual and Liturgical Piety in Dionysius the Areopagite 308

Andrew Louth
16 Ps.-Ps.-Dionysius on the Dormition of the Virgin Mary: The Armenian

Letter of Dionysius to Titus 325
Stephen J. Shoemaker
17 The “Platonic” Character of Gregory of Nyssa’s Psychology: The Old

Canon 337
Michel René Barnes
18 Charioteer and Helmsman: Some Distant Echoes of Plato’s Phaedrus in

Syriac Literature 358
Sebastian Brock
Index of Modern Authors 377

Index of Subjects 384
Abbreviations
AB Anchor Bible
AGAJU Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums
AJSR Association for Jewish Studies Review
ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers
AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament
ArBib Aramaic Bible
ATR Anglican Theological Review
AUSS Andrews University Seminary Studies
BAR Biblical Archaeology Review
BBR Bulletin for Biblical Research
BBTT Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations
BEHE Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études
Bib Biblica
BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
BZNW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CBQMS Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series
CBR Currents in Biblical Research
CDA Corpus Dionysiacum
CH Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius
CRINT Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum
CS Cistercian Studies
CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert
DN Divine Names of Pseudo-Dionysius
DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers
DSD Dead Sea Discoveries
EB Eichstätter Beiträge
EC Early Christianity
EH Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius
EJL Early Judaism and Its Literature
EL Ephemerides Liturgicae
ExpTim Expository Times
FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament
GCFI Giornale critico della filosofia italiana
GCS Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte
xii abbreviations
GRMS Greek and Roman Musical Studies

HIS Harvard Iranian Series
HR History of Religions
HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
Imm Immanuel
ITQ Irish Theological Quarterly
JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
JR Journal of Religion
JSJSS Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman
Period: Supplement Series
JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament
JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament. Supplement Series
JSOTSS Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. Supplement Series
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
LCL Loeb Classical Library
LSTS Library of Second Temple Studies
MBTh Münsterische Beiträge Zur Theologie
MHMJS Metrical Homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug
MT Masoretic Text
MT Mystical Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius
NHMS Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies
NHS Nag Hammadi Studies
NIVAC The NIV Application Commentary
NovT Novum Testamentum
NPNF 1 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series
NPNF 2 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series
NSBT New Studies in Biblical Theology
OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis
OC Oriens Christianus
OCA Orientalia Christiana Analecta
OCP Orientalia Christiana Periodica
OECS Oxford Early Christian Studies
abbreviations xiii
OECT Oxford Early Christian Texts

PG Patrologia Graeca, ed. J.P. Migne
PhilosRev The Philosophical Review
PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J.P. Migne
PO Patrologia Orientalis
PPRT Perspectives on Philosophy and Religious Thought
PT Platonic Theology of Proclus
PTS Patristische Texte und Studien
RB Révue Biblique
REArm Revue des études arméniennes
REJ Revue des études juives
RevQ Revue de Qumrân
RHPR Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses
RSR Recherches de science religieuse
RTAM Recherches de théologie ancienne et mediévale
SBLSP Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers
SC Sources chrétiennes
SCH Studies in Church History
Scr. Syr. Scriptores Syri
ScrB Scripture Bulletin
SJJTP Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy
SM Studia Monastica
SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series
ST Studi e testi
STAC Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum
STDJ Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah
SVC Supplements to Vigiliae christianae
Sub. Subsidia
TBN Themes in Biblical Narrative
TCS Text-Critical Studies
TED Translations of Early Documents
ThH Théologie Historique
TSAJ Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum
TSMEMJ Texts and Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Judaism
TTH Translated Texts for Historians
TU Texte und Untersuchungen. Leipzig
VC Vigiliae christianae
VetTSup Supplements to Vetus Testamentum
WS Woodbrooke Studies
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
xiv abbreviations
WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes

ŹM Źródła i monografie
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
Notes on Contributors
Khaled Anatolios
John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame,
Indiana, USA.

Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of History and Reli-
gion, Department of Religious Studies, Brown University, Providence, Rhode
Island, USA.
Michel René Barnes

Associate Professor Emeritus, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
USA.
John Behr
Georges Florovsky Distinguished Professor of Patristics, Saint Vladimir’s Ortho-
dox Theological Seminary, Yonkers, New York, USA.
Sebastian Brock
Emeritus Reader in Syriac Studies, and Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College,
Oxford, UK.
Bogdan G. Bucur
Associate Professor of Theology, Duquesne University, Pittsburg, USA.
Silviu N. Bunta
Associate Professor, University of Dayton, Ohio, USA.
April D. DeConick
Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of New Testament and Early Chris-
tianity, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA.
Charles A. Gieschen
Professor of Exegetical Theology, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne,
Indiana, USA.
xvi notes on contributors
Andrew Louth
Professor Emeritus of Patristic and Byzantine Studies, Durham University, Dur-
ham, UK.
John A. McGuckin
Professor of Byzantine Christian Studies, Columbia University, New York, USA.
Andrei A. Orlov
Kelly Chair in Theology, Professor of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity,
Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
István Perczel
Professor, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
Marcus Plested
Henri de Lubac Chair, Professor of Greek Patristic and Byzantine Theology,
Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
James R. Russell
Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts, USA.
Professor of Religious Studies, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA.
Charles M. Stang
Professor of Early Christian Thought, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA.
Robin Darling Young

Associate Professor, Catholic University of America, Washington DC, USA.
Bibliography of the Works of Alexander Golitzin
Compiled by Bogdan G. Bucur
Books
The Sacred Athlete: On the Mystical Experience and Dionysius, Its Westernworld Foun-
tainhead. With Richard Blum. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991.
Et introibo ad altare Dei: The Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagita, with Special Reference
to Its Predecessors in the Eastern Christian Tradition. Analekta Vlatadon 59. Thessa-
loniki: Patriarchal Institute of Patristic Studies, 1994.
St Symeon the New Theologian on the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses. 3 volumes.
Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995–1997.
The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain : Contemporary Voices from Mount Athos. South
Canaan, Pa.: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1996. The introductory study (“Athos, Past
and Present”) was translated into Romanian, as a postface to Arhimandritul Emil-
ianos, Cateheze și cuvântări. Vol. 1: Monahismul, pecetea adevărată, 251–306. Sibiu:
Deisis, 1999.
Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church. With Michael Prokurat and Michael Peter-
son. London, UK/Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996. Republished as The A to Z of
the Orthodox Church. Lanham/Toronto/Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow Press, 2010.
Mistagogia. Experienta lui Dumnezeu în Ortodoxie. Sibiu: Deisis, 1998.
Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita. Edited by Bogdan G. Bucur.
CS 250. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2013. Romanian translation: Dion-
isie Areopagitul Mistagogul. O lectură monahală. Sibiu: Deisis, 2015.
Jacob of Sarug’s Homily on the Chariot that Prophet Ezekiel Saw. Translation and Intro-
duction by Alexander Golitzin. Edited with Notes by Mary T. Hansbury. Texts from
Christian Late Antiquity 3. Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2016.
Articles
“‘On the Other Hand’ [A Response to Fr Paul Wesche’s Recent Article on Dionysius in St
Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 1].” Saint Vladimir’s Theological Quar-
terly 34 (1990): 305–323.
“The Mysticism of Dionysius Areopagita: Platonist or Christian?” Mystics Quarterly 19
(1993): 98–114.
“Hierarchy Versus Anarchy: Dionysius Areopagita, Symeon the New Theologian, Nice-
tas Stethatos, and Their Common Roots in the Ascetical Tradition.” St Vladimir’s
Theological Quarterly 38 (1994): 131–179.
xviii compiled by bucur
“Echoes of Another Christendom.” In The South Slav Conflict: History, Religion, Ethnic-
ity, and Nationalism. Edited by Raju G.C. Thomas and H. Richard Friman, 51–77. New
York/London: Garland, 1996.
“Anathema! Some Historical Perspectives on the Athonite Statement of May 1995.” St.
Nersess Theological Review 3 (1998): 103–117.
“Liturgy and Mysticism: The Experience of God in Eastern Orthodox Christianity.” Pro
Ecclesia 8 (1999): 159–186. An extended version is available, in English, on the online
scholarly portal Maqom (https://www.marquette.edu/maqom/Liturgy.pdf) and, in
Romanian translation, in Mistagogia. Experienta lui Dumnezeu în Ortodoxie, 23–86.
Sibiu: Deisis, 1998.
“‘A Contemplative and a Liturgist’: Father Georges Florovsky on the Corpus Dionysi-
acum.” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 43 (1999): 131–161.
“Temple and Throne of the Divine Glory: ‘Pseudo-Macarius’ and Purity of Heart,
Together with Some Remarks on the Limitations and Usefulness of Scholarship.”
In Purity of Heart in Early Ascetic and Monastic Literature: Essays in Honor of Juana
Raasch, O.S.B. Edited by Harriet A. Luckman and Linda Kulzer, O.S.B., 107–129. Col-
legeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999.
“Revisiting the ‘Sudden’: Epistle III in the Corpus Dionysiacum.” Studia Patristica 37
(2001): 482–491.
“‘Many Lamps Are Lightened From the One’: Paradigms of the Transformational Vision
in the Macarian Homilies.” VC 55 (2001): 281–298. [With Andrei Orlov]
“Earthly Angels and Heavenly Men: The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Nicetas Ste-
thatos, and the Tradition of Interiorized Apocalyptic in Eastern Christian Ascetical
and Mystical Literature.” DOP 55 (2001): 125–153.
“Adam, Eve, and Seth: Pneumatological Reflections On An Unusual Image in Gregory
of Nanzianus’s Fifth Theological Oration.” ATR 83 (2001): 537–546.
“Dionysius Areopagites in the Works of Saint Gregory Palamas: On the Question of a
‘Christological Corrective’ and Related Matters.” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly
46 (2002): 163–190. Republished in The Theophaneia School: Jewish Roots of Christian
Mysticism. Edited by Basil Lourié and Andrei Orlov, 83–105. Scrinium 3. St. Peters-
burg: Byzantinorossica, 2007.
“The Demons Suggest an Illusion of God’s Glory in a Form: Controversy Over the Divine
Body and Vision of Glory in Some Late Fourth, Early Fifth Century Monastic Liter-
ature.” SM 44 (2002): 13–44. Republished in The Theophaneia School: Jewish Roots of
Christian Mysticism. Edited by Basil Lourié and Andrei Orlov, 49–82. Scrinium 3. St.
Petersburg: Byzantinorossica, 2007.
“A Testimony to Christianity as Transfiguration: The Macarian Homilies and Orthodox
Spirituality.” In Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality. Edited by S.T. Kimbrough, Jr.,
129–156. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002.
“Dionysius Areopagita: A Christian Mysticism?.” Pro Ecclesia 12 (2003): 161–212. Repub-
bibliography of the works of alexander golitzin xix
lished in The Theophaneia School: Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism. Edited
by Basil Lourié and Andrei Orlov, 128–179. Scrinium 3. St. Petersburg: Byzantinoros-
sica, 2007.
“The Place of the Presence of God: Aphrahat of Persia’s Portrait of the Christian Holy
Man.” In ΣΥΝΑΞΙΣ ΕΥΧΑΡΙΣΤΙΑΣ: Studies in Honor of Archimandrite Aimilianos of
Simonos Petras, Mount Athos, 391–447. Athens: Indiktos, 2003.
“‘Suddenly, Christ’: The Place of Negative Theology in the Mystagogy of Dionysius Are-
opagites.” In Mystics: Presence and Aporia. Edited by Michael Kessler and Christian
Shepherd, 8–37. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
“Recovering the ‘Glory of Adam’: ‘Divine Light’ Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls and
the Christian Ascetical Literature of Fourth-Century Syro-Mesopotamia.” In The
Dead Sea Scrolls as Background to Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity: Papers
from an International Conference at St Andrews in 2001. Edited by James R. Davila et
al., 275–308. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
“The Image and Glory of God in Jacob of Serug’s Homily, On That Chariot That Ezekiel
the Prophet Saw.” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 46 (2003): 323–364. Repub-
lished in The Theophaneia School: Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism. Edited
by Basil Lourié and Andrei Orlov, 180–212. Scrinium 3. St. Petersburg: Byzanti-
norossica, 2007.
“Topos Theou: The Monastic Elder as Theologian and Theology. An Appreciation of
Elder Aimilianos of Simonos Petras.” In Mount Athos, the Sacred Bridge: The Spiritu-
ality of the Holy Mountain. Edited by Dimitri Conomos and Graham Speake, 201–242.
Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005.
“Scriptural Images of the Church: An Eastern Orthodox Reflection.” In One, Holy, Catho-
lic and Apostolic: Ecumenical Reflections on the Church. Edited by Tamara Grdzelidze,
255–266. Geneva: WCC Publications, 2005.
“Christian Mysticism over Two Millennia.” In The Theophaneia School: Jewish Roots of
Christian Mysticism. Edited by Basil Lourié and Andrei Orlov, 17–33. Scrinium 3. St.
Petersburg: Byzantinorossica, 2007.
“The Vision of God and the Form of Glory: More Reflections on the Anthropomorphite
Controversy of AD 399.” In Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West: Festschrift
for Bishop Kallistos Ware. Edited by Andrew Louth and Dimitri E. Conomos, 273–297.
Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007.
“Il corpo di Cristo: Simeone il Nuovo Teologo sulla vita spirituale e la chiesa gerar-
chica.” In Simeone il Nuovo Teologo e il monachesimo a Costantinopoli. Edited by
Sabino Chialà et al., 255–288. Qiqajon: Monastero di Bose, 2003. English translation:
“The Body of Christ: Saint Symeon the New Theologian on Spiritual Life and the
Hierarchical Church.” In The Theophaneia School: Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian
Mysticism. Edited by Basil Lourié and Andrei Orlov, 106–127. Scrinium 3. St. Peters-
burg: Byzantinorossica, 2007.
xx compiled by bucur
“Theophaneia: Forum on the Jewish Roots of Orthodox Spirituality.” In The Theo-

phaneia School: Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism. Edited by Basil Lourié
and Andrei Orlov, xvii–xx. Scrinium 3. St. Petersburg: Byzantinorossica, 2007.
“Heavenly Mysteries: Themes from Apocalyptic Literature in the Macarian Homilies
and Selected Other Fourth Century Ascetical Writers.” In Apocalyptic Themes in
Early Christianity. Edited by Robert Daly, 174–192. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic,
2009.
“A Monastic Setting for the Syriac Apocalypse of Daniel.” In To Train His Soul in Books:
Syriac Asceticism in Early Christianity. Edited by Robin Darling Young and Monica
J. Blanchard, 66–98. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011.
Introduction
Andrei A. Orlov
This collection of essays is intended to honor Alexander Golitzin, a scholar

known for his original vision of Jewish and Christian mystical texts and tra-
ditions.
Alexander Yurievich Golitzin was born in Burbank, California, on May 27,
1948, a son of Yuri Alexandrovich Golitzin and Carol (née Higgins) Golitzin.
Through his father, Prince Yuri (George) Golitzin (1916–1963), he is a descen-
dant of the Golitzin princely line. Alexander Golitzin attended the University
of California at Berkeley, where he received a B.A. in English in 1970. In 1973, he
earned a Master of Divinity degree from St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological
Seminary. With the help of his mentor at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, John Meyen-
dorff, Golitzin spent his next seven years at Oxford in doctoral studies and was
granted a D.Phil. degree in 1980. His doctoral work on Pseudo-Dionysius was
supervised by Kallistos Ware with Sebastian Brock and Henry Chadwick as his
dissertation examiners.
During his doctoral studies, Golitzin also spent two years in Greece, includ-
ing one year at the monastery of Simonos Petras on Mount Athos. His time
at Simonos Petras, under the guidance of its archimandrite, Elder Aimilianos
(Vafeidis), was decisive in shaping his understanding of mystical experience. In
his own words, on Mount Athos he found that “the holy man was not a distant
ideal or a literary topos—something out of an eight-century manuscript or a
Paleologian icon—but a reality.”1
After receiving his D.Phil. from Oxford, he returned to the USA, where he
was ordained to the diaconate on January 23, 1982 and to the priesthood two
years later, on February 26, 1984. In 1986, he was tonsured to monastic orders
by the Elder Aimilianos at the monastery of Simonos Petras and received the
monastic name of Alexander. He served the Orthodox Church by participating
in missions in northern California and headed the Diocese of the West’s mis-
sion committee.
In 1989, Golitzin took up a permanent faculty position in the Theology
Department at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where, over the
next two decades, he established himself as a leading expert on Jewish and
1 Alexander Golitzin, Et introibo ad altare Dei: The Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagita, with
Special Reference to Its Predecessors in the Eastern Christian Tradition, Analekta Vlatadon 59
(Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute of Patristic Studies, 1994), 9.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004429536_002

2 orlov
Christian mysticism. Although widely known for his groundbreaking scholar-

ship, he also became an exceptional teacher who was able to mentor a large
cohort of doctoral students during his time at Marquette. He was particularly
helpful to those students who came to Marquette University from the East-
ern Orthodox tradition by giving them a clearer understanding of their own
theological and spiritual legacy. During his tenure at Marquette University he
formed with his doctoral students what later came to be known as the “Theo-
phaneia School”—a theological forum on the Jewish roots of Eastern Christian
mysticism.2
In April 2012, Golitzin retired from Marquette University as Professor Emer-
itus. On Saturday, May 5, 2012, he was consecrated Bishop of Toledo and the
Bulgarian Diocese during a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy at Saint George Ortho-
dox Cathedral in Rossford, Ohio. On March 30, 2016, he was elected Bishop of
Dallas, the South and the Bulgarian Diocese. During the 2017 Spring Session of
the Holy Synod, he was elevated to the rank of Archbishop.
1 Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism and Mysticism
One of the distinctive features of Golitzin’s scholarly approach, manifested

already in his earliest writings, was his keen attention to the Jewish matrix of
Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality. Golitzin’s appreciation of early Jew-
ish traditions, represented not only in the Hebrew Bible, but also in the large
body of extra-biblical apocalyptic and mystical testimonies, was initially devel-
oped under the influence of his spiritual mentor, Elder Aimilianos, and the
monks of the monastery of Simonos Petras on Mount Athos. Archimandrite
Aimilianos himself was a learned man who had some knowledge of Jewish mys-
tical accounts and did not discourage his monks from reading these texts. Once,
during a later visit to Simonos Petras, Golitzin spotted Schäfer’s Synopse zur
Hekhalot-Literatur in the hands of one of Aimilianos’ monks. This early inter-
est in Jewish apocalyptic and mystical traditions, along with their relevance
for understanding Eastern Christian spirituality, was stimulated when Golitzin
joined the theological faculty of Marquette University in 1989. There some of
his colleagues, including Michel Barnes, introduced him to the scholarship of
Alan Segal and other experts in Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism.
2 Basil Lourié and Andrei Orlov, eds., The Theophaneia School: Jewish Roots of Christian Mys-
ticism, Scrinium 3 (St. Petersburg: Byzantinorossica, 2007 [reprint: Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias
Press, 2009]).
introduction 3
By the middle of the 90s, Golitzin had established himself as one of the most
significant voices among Orthodox scholars advocating for the importance of
Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism in understanding the conceptual roots
of Orthodox theology and liturgy. In one of his writings, he insisted that “the
recent developments in the study of apocalyptic literature, of the Qumran
Scrolls, of Gnosticism, and of later Jewish mysticism … throw new and welcome
light on the sources and continuities of Orthodox theology, liturgy, and spiritu-
ality.”3 Golitzin firmly upheld the conviction that “Eastern Christian asceticism
and monasticism—i.e., Eastern spirituality, in short—arose out of an original
matrix in the pre-Christian era of Second Temple Judaism.”4
Still, Golitzin’s work on the Jewish roots of Eastern Christian spirituality has
never been widely accepted, and even today he remains a lonely voice in the
larger Orthodox scholarly community. In his books and articles, Golitzin often
laments the failure of Orthodox scholarship to attend to “the patrimony of bib-
lical and post-biblical Israel.”5 Moreover, he persistently reminds his Orthodox
colleagues that the Church arose out of the great pool of Israel’s traditions, and
that from this pool she “has continued to draw in order to frame her dogmas,
to voice her praises, to understand her vocation, and to describe the Christian
calling as embodied in her saints.”6
Golitzin insists that “no one who has seriously studied patristic exegesis, or
ancient theological controversy, or the liturgy, or the writings of the Church
Fathers can have missed the overwhelming presence of exactly those images
and texts that are present in early Jewish testimonies.”7 Even so, an appreci-
ation of Christianity’s Jewish roots is strikingly lacking in modern Orthodox
theological reflection: “neither in the older school theology that has haunted
Orthodox seminaries, nor even (with some exceptions) among the advocates
of the neo-patristic synthesis do the great theophanies either of Israel, or of
the New Testament (save the Transfiguration), enjoy the prominent, indeed
central role that they should have, and that they do have in the Fathers, in the
liturgical texts, and in the spiritual writers.”8 For Golitzin, Jewish apocalypses,
preserved and copied by Orthodox monks for centuries, are living proof that
3 Alexander Golitzin, “Theophaneia: Forum of the Jewish Roots of Orthodox Spirituality,” in

Lourié and Orlov, The Theophaneia School, xix.
4 Alexander Golitzin, “Christian Mysticism over Two Millenia,” in Lourié and Orlov, The Theo-
phaneia School, xxi.
5 Golitzin, “Theophaneia: Forum of the Jewish Roots of Orthodox Spirituality,” xix.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
4 orlov
their ancient custodians had a great appreciation of their Jewish heritage. He

often notes the difference between these monks and those modern Orthodox
academics who ignore this rich legacy of pseudepigraphical and apocryphal
materials from post-biblical Israel and Christian antiquity. Whereas the monks
thought these documents were worthy of the considerable attention necessary
just to copy them, one would be hard-pressed to find a single, contemporary
Orthodox theologian who devotes any significant amount of time and space
even to study them.9
One of Golitzin’s original contributions to the understanding of the evolu-
tion from Jewish to Christian apocalypticism, and then further to apocalyp-
tic traditions preserved by Eastern Orthodox authors, is his concept of the
so-called “interiorized apocalypticism.” He defined this phenomenon as “the
transposition of the cosmic setting of apocalyptic literature and in particular of
the ‘out of body’ experience of heavenly ascent and transformation to the inner
theater of the soul.”10 In many of his articles, he traces the development of the
interiorization of the ascent to heaven, as well as other apocalyptic motifs from
the Second Temple and early Christian apocalypses, to later Orthodox monas-
tic literature.
2 Theophany and Transformation
In early Jewish biblical and pseudepigraphical accounts, divine theophanies

are often portrayed as revelations of the divine Glory, or Kavod. Moreover, these
early Jewish testimonies attempt to envision Kavod not simply as an anthro-
pomorphic manifestation of the deity, but rather as a crucial nexus of cultic
devotion and worship. Such veneration of the divine Glory takes place not only
in heaven, where the divine Kavod is surrounded by angelic worship, but also
on earth, where the symbolic presence of the divine Form between the two
cherubim of the Holy of Holies becomes the very center of the Jewish sacrifi-
cial cult. Early roots of this Kavod symbolism in Jewish lore are traceable to the
mythological imagery found in the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, which
became an enduring inspiration for generations of apocalypticists and mystics,
including later Eastern Orthodox authors.
9 Ibid.
10 Alexander Golitzin, “Earthly Angels and Heavenly Men: The Old Testament Pseudepig-
rapha, Nicetas Stethatos, and the Tradition of Interiorized Apocalyptic in Eastern Chris-
tian Ascetical and Mystical Literature,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001): 125–153 at
141.
introduction 5
In the manifesto of the “Theophaneia School,” a theological forum, which

Golitzin established with his graduate students during his tenure as a profes-
sor at Marquette university, he argues that theophany stands “at the heart of
the Orthodox tradition.”11 In the “Theophaneia School” theological program,
he also reminds us that the Christian East has always understood theophany
as the very content of the gospel of Jesus Christ, since this word means, lit-
erally, the manifestation or appearance of God.12 And, indeed, one can agree
with Golitzin that “theophany permeates the Orthodox tradition throughout,
informing its dogmatic theology and its liturgy.”13
Yet, at the same time, in this document and in other publications Golitzin
identifies how this essential theophanic character of Orthodox theology has
become marginalized and forgotten in modern times, especially in academic
settings. He reflects on this unfortunate theological forgetfulness in contem-
porary Orthodoxy by noting that “while the witness continues uninterrupted
in the liturgical texts, in hagiography, in the practice of the monasteries and
especially of the hermitages, the formal, academic theology taught in Ortho-
dox schools … has long lost sight of this essential, theophanic thread.”14
3 Jewish Temple and Christian Liturgy
Another distinctive feature of Golitzin’s scholarly approach is his keen atten-

tion to Jewish sacerdotal and liturgical traditions which profoundly shaped
both early Christian liturgical settings and later Eastern Orthodox mystical tes-
timonies.
Golitzin argues that even though “the Gospel of the Risen Jesus compelled
a certain parting of the ways with Christianity’s Jewish matrix, it would be
wrong to exaggerate the extent of that rupture.”15 For him, the lines of conti-
nuity and discontinuity appear perhaps most clearly in the scriptural idea of
the “Temple.” While in biblical Israel the Temple was the locus of the Glory
of God, in nascent Christianity these sacerdotal settings became applied to
Jesus, who replaced the Temple and the Torah as the primary “place” of the
divine presence.16 In this novel Christian reformulation, Jesus Christ himself
11 Golitzin, “Theophaneia: Forum of the Jewish Roots of Orthodox Spirituality,” xvii.

12 Ibid.
13 Golitzin, “Theophaneia: Forum of the Jewish Roots of Orthodox Spirituality,” xviii.
14 Ibid.
15 Golitzin, “Christian Mysticism over Two Millenia,” xxiii.
16 Ibid.
6 orlov
was identified as the Glory or Shekinah17 who “tabernacled among us,” accord-
ing to John 1:14.18 Golitzin demonstrated how the idea of the Temple was not
completely lost in the Christian tradition, but rather adapted through Chris-
tological reformulations. Long before Greek philosophical vocabulary became
the standard conceptual vehicle of Christian doctrine, Christians natively and
universally drew on the symbolic liturgical language of the Jewish Temple.19 As
in the earliest Jewish traditions about the heavenly Temple, the Church’s liturgy
was understood to be the mirror of heaven which reveals “the city of the liv-
ing God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb 12:22).20 Such sacerdotal imagery was
already influential among New Testament authors and remained dominant in
the Eastern Orthodox tradition until the advent of modernity. Yet, in contempo-
rary patristic scholarship, all references to early Jewish symbolism found in dog-
matic and ascetical works of the Church Fathers, whether the imagery of the
Divine Chariot (the Merkavah), the Holy of Holies, the Temple, or the details
of the temple worship are usually interpreted as mere rhetorical devices and
stylistic embellishments.21 Golitzin criticizes such a simplified approach, con-
tending that without a proper understanding of Jewish sacerdotal and liturgical
traditions, we are unable to fully grasp the dogmatic core of patristic theology.
4 Pseudo-Dionysius
Golitzin’s first effort to apply his new methodology to the study of patristic
texts was his doctoral dissertation on Pseudo-Dionysius, defended in Oxford
University and later published in Analekta Vlatadon.22 As Basil Lourié rightly
observes, the Corpus Dionysiacum was simultaneously the most convenient
and the most inconvenient source for testing Golitzin’s fresh methodology of
reading patristic texts. It was most convenient because few other authors drew
on liturgical symbolism so saliently in their formulation of Christian dogma.
And it was most inconvenient because the cultural heritage of the Corpus
Dionysiacum had stronger connections to Platonic rather than to Jewish tra-
17 Andrei A. Orlov, The Glory of the Invisible God: Two Powers in Heaven Traditions and
Early Christology, Jewish and Christian Texts in Context and Related Studies 31 (London:
Bloomsbury, 2019).
18 Golitzin, “Christian Mysticism over Two Millenia,” xxiii.
19 Lourié, “The Theophaneia School: An Ekphrasis of the Heavenly Temple,” xiv.
20 Golitzin, “Theophaneia: Forum of the Jewish Roots of Orthodox Spirituality,” xviii.
21 Lourié, “The Theophaneia School: An Ekphrasis of the Heavenly Temple,” xiv.
22 Golitzin, Et introibo ad altare Dei.
introduction 7
ditions.23 Indeed, while the Platonic connections of the Corpus Dionysiacum

were evident on the surface, its Jewish core was deeply concealed in such a
manner that it required a novel methodology for its full recovery—one, which
only Golitzin’s vision of Jewish roots was able to provide. Golitzin’s discern-
ment of the Jewish roots of Pseudo-Dionysius’ liturgical symbolism did shed
new light on his unique Christology. This, in turn, led to a reconsideration of
the concept of the “Christological corrective,” which, according to Golitzin’s
teacher, John Meyendorff, was developed by Maximus the Confessor and Gre-
gory Palamas in order to understand Pseudo-Dionysius.24 Golitzin showed that
if one reads Pseudo-Dionysius’ text in the language of the Jewish and Christian
liturgical traditions in which it was originally written, the internal Christology
of the Corpus Dionysiacum is impossible to miss, and a “Christological correc-
tive” becomes unnecessary.25
Golitzin’s pioneering study thus placed Pseudo-Dionysius within a tradition
which extends to the origins of Christianity and then even further to its Sec-
ond Temple Jewish roots.26 The study also exhibited his use of more proximate
Christian sources, notably fourth-century Syrian ascetical literature, whose
own roots go back to the earliest forms and sites of Christianity: the Jewish-
Christian villages and communities of Aramaic speaking Palestine.27
In the present volume, many of Alexander Golitzin’s former colleagues and

students have joined together to celebrate his distinguished contribution to
the field of Jewish and Christian mysticism. This Festschrift contains eighteen
essays which are arranged in four sections, corresponding to the four aforemen-
tioned areas of Golitzin’s research interests: 1. Jewish and Christian apocalyp-
ticism and mysticism; 2. Theophany and transformation; 3. Jewish Temple and
Christian liturgy; and 4. Pseudo-Dionysius. The structure of the Festschrift thus
closely follows Golitzin’s own scholarly journey.
The editor wishes to express his appreciation to David Runia and Gerard
Rouwhorst for accepting this volume to the Vigiliae Christianae Supplements,
and also to Brill’s editorial team for bringing it to completion.
23 Lourié, “The Theophaneia School: An Ekphrasis of the Heavenly Temple,” xv.

24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Alexander Golitzin, Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita, CS 250 (Min-
neapolis, Minn.: Cistercian Publications, 2013), 55.
27 Golitzin, Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita, 55.
part 1
Jewish and Christian
Apocalypticism and Mysticism
∵
chapter 1
Traumatic Mysteries: Pathways of Mysticism among

the Early Christians
April D. DeConick
1 In the Beginning
Twenty years ago, I met with three special colleagues. Alan Segal, Jim Davila,
and Chris Morray-Jones. Our purpose was to organize a group that would meet
annually at the convention of the Society of Biblical Literature. We wanted to
start mapping mystical traditions within early Judaism and Christianity. Each
of us had been working on various aspects of these revelatory traditions, exam-
ining soul journeys and their transformational effects, looking at everything
from heavenly geography to ritual behaviors to visions of God.
As we sat in the restaurant talking about this, we had to come up with a name
for our proposal. We were not sure exactly what the phenomenon was that we
were studying, but since the word mysticism had already been attached to it as
a heuristic device in publications beginning in the early twentieth century, we
decided on the name “Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism.” It was not until
several years into the project that we were able to compose a definition of mys-
ticism for our own heuristic purposes, a definition which would help us map
the mystical phenomena we detected in early Jewish and Christian literature.
At the end of our first cycle as a formal group, we published our findings in the
volume Paradise Now.1
In the programmatic essay that introduces Paradise Now, I attempted to
crystalize what the group had accomplished, including the pioneering compar-
ative work of Alexander Golitzin on Merkavah mysticism and Eastern Ortho-
doxy. Golitzin was a dedicated and formative member of the group from the
beginning, along with his student at the time, Andrei Orlov, who established
and forged the study of early Jewish and Christian mysticism in the pseude-
pigraphical literature. I began the chapter with a passage from the Hekhalot
Zutarti that I felt (and still feel) encapsulates the phenomenon mysticism
1 April D. DeConick, ed., Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism (Atlanta:
Society of Biblical Literature, 2006).

12 deconick
that we were (and are) studying: the movement of the person beyond the
mundane world to the world of the sacred, where, in the presence of the
divine, special knowledge is imparted and a (trans)personal transformation
takes place.
And what mortal person is it who is able

To ascend on high,
To ride on wheels,
To descend below,
To search out the inhabited world,
To walk on the dry land,
To gaze at his splendor,
To dwell with his crown,
To be transformed by his glory,
To recite praise,
To combine letters,
To recite their names,
To have a vision of what is above,
To have a vision of what is below,
To know the explanation of the living,
And to see the vision of the dead,
To walk in rivers of fire,
And to know the lightening?
And who is able to explain it?
And who is able to see it?2
In that chapter, I struggled with emic and etic definitions, recognizing that the
ancient people we study did not use the word mysticism to describe their direct
experiences of the divine, but rather call these experiences apocalypses or reve-
lations. They broke these experiences down further into categories like waking
visions, dreams, trances, and auditions that can involve spirit possession and
ascent journeys of the soul. To keep true to their emic apocalyptic reference, I
framed the central aspect of early Jewish and Christian mysticism as the belief
2 Hekhalot Zutarti §§349–350: Peter Schäfer et al., eds., Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur,
TSAJ 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981). English translation: Peter Schäfer, The Hidden and
Manifest God: Some Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism. Translation by A. Pomerance
(Albany: SUNY, 1992). For a newer edition and translation, see James R. Davila, Hekhalot
Literature in Translation: Major Texts of Merkavah Mysticism, SJJTP 20 (Leiden: Brill, 2013),
205–206.
traumatic mysteries 13
that a person directly, immediately, and before death can experience the divine,
either as a rapture experience or as one solicited by a particular praxis.3
I presented mysticism as an internalized atemporal apocalypse, in contrast to
the temporal eschatological dimensions of apocalyptic thought, which seem to
me to be overrated in the classic definitions of apocalyptic.4 Mysticism had to
do with religious experience as the act of revelation itself, the encounter with
God that often results in the person’s immediate (trans)personal transforma-
tion and the uncovering of God’s mysteries.5 It was developed and fostered par-
ticularly among Jews and Christians who were disillusioned with the redemp-
tive eschatological promises made to their ancestors, promises that they felt
were debatable, unfulfilled or foolish, especially given their local political and
economic situations of colonization and imperialism.6
I went on to suggest that the mysticism we discover in early Jewish and Chris-
tian texts share unique features that most likely derive from a wide variety of
Jewish and Christian groups that were familiar with Second Temple Jewish reli-
giosity. These features include a heavy reliance on a cluster of foundational
Jewish texts such as Genesis 1–3, Exodus 24 and 33, Ezekiel 1, 8, and 40–48,
Daniel 7, and Isaiah 6. This scriptural foundation led to the emergence of a
variety of common themes, including the centrality of the figure known as the
kavod or Glory of YHWH as the object of vision and worship, the projection of
the earthly temple into the celestial spheres, the prominence of the merkavah
3 April D. DeConick, “What is Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism?” in April D. DeConick,
ed., Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism (Atlanta: Society of Biblical
Literature, 2006), 1–26 at 1–2.
4 Cf. David S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (Philadelphia: Westmin-
ster Press, 1964); Walter Schmithals, The Apocalyptic Movement (Nashville: Abingdon, 1975);
John J. Collins, ed., Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre, Semeia 14 (Missoula, MT: Scholars
Press, 1979), 1–32; John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish
Matrix of Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 1–32. Stone [Michael E. Stone, “Lists of
Revealed Things in the Apocalyptic Literature,” in Frank Moore Cross, Werner E. Lemke, and
Patrick D. Miller, Jr., eds., Magnalia Dei: The Mighty Acts of God (Garden City: Doubleday, 1976),
414–451] made one of the first attempts to work out the themes of apocalypticism beyond
its eschatological dimensions. Rowland [Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven (London:
SPCK, 1982)] pointed out the problems with limiting view of apocalypticism to eschatology.
Rowland [Christopher Rowland and Christopher R.A. Morray-Jones. The Mystery of God: Early
Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament, CRINT 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 3–218], went on to
develop his understanding of the mystical dimension of apocalypticism in the New Testa-
ment.
5 Cf. Christopher R.A. Morray-Jones, “Transformational Mysticism in the Apocalyptic-Merka-
bah Tradition,” JJS 43 (1992): 1–31.
6 DeConick, “What is Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism?,” 18–19.
14 deconick
or throne-chariot as the seat of the Glory, and the understanding of the pargod
or temple veil as the celestial firmament that keeps the upper realm separate
and hidden from the lower heavenly sanctuaries.7
Another common feature, almost a given, is the story of Adam, who was
believed by these Jews and Christians to be created in God’s radiant image.
As a consequence of his disobedience and fall, the radiance of his body was
lost, altered or taken away, so that now only a garment of skins (his physical
body) clothes him. According to these Jews and Christians, redemption of the
lost image should not wait until the eschaton when the dead would be raised.
The restoration of Adam’s prelapsarian glory was to be achieved personally
before death, even if provisionally. Jewish and Christian groups that fostered
mysticism, like the Therapeutae of Egypt or the Thomasine Christians of Syria,
fostered life as angels in the here and now.8
This transformative goal meant that various practices were performed (or
endured) in order to purge and alter the body, so that it became an extreme
body worthy of garments of glory. The literature abounds with references to
ascetic practices like fasting and celibacy, washing, standing vigils, consuming
divine food and drink, anointing the body with holy oils, and repetitive inton-
ing of mantras constructed from God’s secret name. While no single praxis is
suggested by the literature, the goal of the praxis was steady. To create extreme
bodies that could endure the dangers of the supramundane world and receive
the promises of paradise now.9
2 Defining the Difference
While our group had been focusing on mapping early Jewish and Christian
mysticism as a bilateral phenomenon emergent from Second Temple Judaism,
as we entered the second phase of our work, I began focusing exclusively
in Christian and Christian gnostic texts. It quickly became clear to me that
this bilateral Jewish-Christian phenomenon had developed very differently
in Jewish and Christian contexts. In other words, early Christian mysticism
had unique characteristics right from the start of the Christian movement,
and these were extremely significant when it came to the mystical praxis and
its goals. Golitzin’s other students—Silviu Bunta, Bogdan Bucur, and Dragos

Giulea—became active in the group during this period, and worked to under-
stand the unique characteristics of different permutations of early Christian
mysticism as they related to Christology and other issues.
Central to Christian mysticism is the insistence that the revelation is “the
revelation of Jesus Christ.”10 Or to put it another way, Jesus was revealed in
God’s stead. He stood in literally for YHWH’s kavod. The object of the vision
was not just God, but Jesus as God or God’s Glory. Jesus bore YHWH’s Name
and Image. He represented the hidden God in a visible way. What we see with
the development of mysticism in early Christian contexts is a Christocentric
mysticism.11
Consequently, the (apo)theosis is Christocentric too. The mystical praxis and
experience conformed the mystic to the Lord Jesus or Christ Jesus. This is well
put in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians where he states that Christians’
own reflections are reflections of the Glory of the Lord, a glory that the faithful
are being transformed into degree by degree.12 This progressive transformation
is made possible through the power of the Spirit of the Lord, who indwells
Christians.13 Due to the possession of Christ’s Spirit, Christians have taken on
“the same form (τὴν αὐτὴν εἰκόνα)” as the Image of Christ Jesus.14 Paul is so
adamant about this that he states about his own transformed state, “It is no
longer ‘I’ who live, but Christ who lives in me (ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγώ, ζῇ δέ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χρι-
στός).”15 He commands Christians to be transformed by the remaking of their
10 Rev 1:1; Gal 1:11–12.

11 April D. DeConick, “Jesus Revealed: The Dynamics of Early Christian Mysticism,” in
Daphna V. Arbel and Andrei A. Orlov, eds., With Letters of Light: Studies in the Dead Sea
Scrolls, Early Jewish Apocalypticism, Magic, and Mysticism. In Honor of Rachel Elior, Eksta-
sis 2 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 299–324 at 308–311.
12 For detailed presentations of Paul as a mystic, see Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of
Paul the Apostle, translated by William Montgomery (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1931/1998); Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of
Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); John Ashton, The Religion of
Paul the Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); Rowland and Morray-Jones,
The Mystery of God: Early Jewish Mysticism and the New Testament, 137–165; Christopher
R.A. Morray-Jones, “Paradise Revisited (2Cor. 12:1–12): The Jewish Mystical Background of
Paul’s Apostolate, Part 1: The Jewish Sources,”HTR 86 (1993): 177–217; idem, “Paradise Revis-
ited (2Cor. 12:1–12): The Jewish Mystical Background of Paul’s Apostolate, Part 2: Paul’s
Heavenly Ascent and Its Significance,” HTR 86 (1993): 265–292; Colleen Shantz, Paul in
Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle’s Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2009).
13 2Corinthians 3:16–18.
14 1Corinthians 13:12.
15 Galatians 2:20.
16 deconick
minds because they have the mind of Christ indwelling them: ἡμεῖς δὲ νοῦν Χρι-
στοῦ ἔχομεν.16 “If anyone is in Christ,” he says, “he is a new creature. The old
has passed away, behold, the new has been made (ὥστε εἴ τις ἐν Χριστῷ, καινῂ
κτίσις· τὰ ἀρχαῖα παρῆλθεν, ἰδοὺ γέγονεν καινά).”17 While Paul only amounts to
one example from the Christian literature of this Christocentric (apo)theosis,
his testimony is foundational to the later Christians who continue to develop
Christ-centered devotion informed by mystical practices.18
Paul’s insistence on a Christocentric transformation reflected another differ-
ence, perhaps the most profound, when it comes to early Christian mysticism.
The mystical praxis is not the purview of a few specially trained adept men.
Mysticism is democratized, including its extension to women, children and
slaves, through the establishment of sacraments that make the presence of
Christ regularly and immediately available to all believers regardless of race,
gender or social status.19 It is associated with conversion, with the traumatic
shift from the old and normative to the new and aberrant, and the conserva-
tion of this new aberrant self within the new and aberrant community. There
is a rejection of past social affiliations and a leaving behind or reinterpretation
of past cognitive holdings in dramatic ways. This move from one orientation to
another is a form of apostasy. It often elicits anxiety, angst and grief over the
loss of former relationships, beliefs, and practices.20
Baptism and the eucharist, both early and classic Christian rituals, are under-
stood to affect the transformation of the soul and the integration of Christ’s
Spirit into the person. It is the indwelling Spirit who is the revelator of God
to every convert.21 As early as Paul, these rituals were believed to integrate the
person into the divine immediately and ontologically through spirit possession.
They were mysteries that revealed the mystery of the ages, Jesus Christ as God’s
Glory.
It was my study of Paul and his understanding of baptism and the eucharist
as technologies for mystical participation and transformation, that led me to
realize that it makes good heuristic sense to distinguish mysticism from mysti-
cal experience, something I did not do in Paradise Now. Mysticism encompasses
16 1Corinthians 2:16; cf. Romans 12:2; Philippians 2:1–5.

17 2Corinthians 5:17; cf. Galatians 6:15; Colossians 3:9–10.
18 For more details, see DeConick, “Jesus Revealed: The Dynamics of Early Christian Mysti-
cism,” 311–316.
19 DeConick, “Jesus Revealed: The Dynamics of Early Christian Mysticism,” 316–320.
20 Lewis R. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1993), 53–54.
21 1Corinthians 2:10.
the technologies that prompt and achieve mystical experiences. That said, not
all mystical experiences are bound to technologies. Some occur unsolicited via
rapture.
This has led me to modify my original understanding, so that mysticism is
the solicitation and participation in a direct ecstatic experience of Ultimate Real-
ity prompted by cultic rites, established practices, or other technologies.22 On the
other hand, mystical experience can be the result of an unsolicited revelation that
comes directly from God through an ecstatic vision or a meeting with a divine
emissary.23 As I moved on to study the interface of mysticism and cognitive
science, I came to understand how mysticism and mystical experiences coin-
cide with ecstatic neurobiological processes, what we sometimes today call altered
states of consciousness.24
The rapturous experience of Jesus Christ as God likely led to Paul’s construc-
tion of the baptism and eucharist as technologies to stimulate the transforma-
tion of the faithful and their incorporation into God via the assimilation of the
Christ Spirit. In other words, pathways of mysticism in early Christianity, with
their technologies of purgation, possession, invasion, incorporation and trans-
formation, develop in order to elicit again the primary rapture.
Provided this understanding, what heuristic model or typology might be
constructed to describe pathways of mysticism that emerge among the early
Christians? While we might construct a typology based on the different types
of technologies (water rites, unction, sexual abstinence, fasting, chanting, pray-
ing, etc.) or distinctions in the mystical experience (angelic transformation,
investiture, enthronement, gaze, sacred marriage, divine integration, etc.), I
have preferred instead an organization that highlights the entire path as evi-
denced in a case study. I do this to retain, as much as possible, holistic descrip-
tions of case studies, wishing to avoid cannibalizing the case studies for hearts
22 April D. DeConick, “Mysticism Before Mysticism: Teaching Christian Mysticism as a Histo-

rian of Religion,” in William B. Parsons, ed., Teaching Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011), 26–45 at 28.
23 Rowland and Morray-Jones, The Mystery of God, 18.
24 Eugene D’Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Reli-
gious Experience (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999); Patrick McNamara, The Neuroscience
of Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2009); Colleen Shantz,
Paul in Ecstasy: The Neurobiology of the Apostle’s Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2009); István Czachesz, Cognitive Science and the New Testament:
A New Approach to Early Christian Research (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 141–
165. Cf. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Altered States of Knowledge: The Attainment of Gno-
sis in the Hermetica,” The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 2 (2008), 128–
163.
18 deconick
and kidneys. What I want to know is what various Christians and groups of
Christians were doing (or proposing to do) to get to God in the here and now.
Because this model is based on selective case studies, it is not intended to be
definitive or exhaustive. Nor are the pathways imagined to be mutually exclu-
sive or competitive. They are constructed to take into consideration the emic
imaginations of early Christians who wished to walk (or fly) through the nar-
row gate, to experience God, immediately and directly.
3 Mysticism as Sacrament
Paul saw the Christian cultic rites of baptism and eucharist as stimuli for
the indwelling of the Christ Spirit and the progressive transformation of the
believer into Christ’s image and spiritual body. According to Paul, baptism
washed clean the person, making the person righteous and providing sancti-
fication through the indwelling of the spirit and the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ.25 Because the baptized have put on Christ, all gender, religious, and
social distinctions are gone.26
Paul develops his baptismal theology by ruminating on the implications of
being possessed by Christ’s Spirit. If we have his spirit in us and have come part
of his body, then we experience everything that he experienced, including his
death and resurrection. This is why Paul says that when the faithful are bap-
tized into Jesus Christ, they are baptized into his death, are buried with him, so
that they are also resurrected like him to walk a new life glorified.27
Paul understood the eucharist similarly. He thinks that drinking the blood
of Christ and eating his body effects union with him. He claims that this oper-
ated on the principle that the person who eats the meat of the sacrificed animal
is united with the God to whom that sacrifice was offered, whether Jews who
make the offering on YHWH’s altar, or the pagans who do so at the table of
demons.28
Paul is not alone among the first Christians to voice this sacramental under-
standing of baptism and eucharist. Mysticism as a sacrament of conversion and
conservation, when the self undergoes a traumatic shift becoming a new crea-
ture in a new community, is highly developed in the Johannine literature.29
25 1Cor 6:1–11.
26 Gal 3:27–28.
27 Rom 6:3–5; 2Cor 4:7–12.
28 1Cor 10:14–22.
29 On sacramentalism in the Gospel of John, see Oscar Cullman, Early Christian Worship
The author of the Gospel of John thinks that the performance of baptism
and eucharist elicit powerful mystical experiences that bring Christ’s Spirit to
the faithful in lieu of the historical absence of Jesus after his death and resur-
rection.30 According to the author of the epistle of John, through these cultic
rites when believers are anointed with the Spirit, Jesus comes to abide in the
believers.31 “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has
given us of his own Spirit (Ἐν τούτῳ γινώσκομεν ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ μένομεν καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν
ἡμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος αὐτοῦ δέδωκεν ἡμῖν).”32
In order to join God’s kingdom (and the Johannine church), converts must
be reborn of water and spirit: ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος, οὐ
δύναται εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ.33 Given that this statement is driven
home within the context of the baptismal activities of Jesus and John the Bap-
tist, we have here a reference to the baptismal experience as the cultic event
that anoints the initiate with the Spirit.34 The baptismal technology is cast as a
rebirth of the human spirit as Spirit so that “what is born of the Spirit is Spirit
(τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος πνεῦμά ἐστιν).”35 It is this rebirth technology
that makes it possible for the initiate to be transformed sufficiently to see God’s
kingdom and to enter it.36
In the fourth chapter of the gospel, the community’s understanding of bap-
tism is worked out within the framework of a story where Jesus offers a Samar-
itan woman “living water (τὸ ὕδωρ τὸ ζῶν)” to quench her thirst eternally.
She discovers that Jesus’ water is thoroughly transformative and immortaliz-
ing.37
The powerful effects of the initiatory ritual are strengthened by the eucharist
meal. It is only in the gospel of John that Jesus is called (repeatedly) the “bread
of life (ὁ ἄρτος τῆς ζωῆς)” that has “come down from heaven (ὁ καταβὰς ἐκ τοῦ
οὐρανοῦ).”38 This bread is Jesus’ sarks or flesh, and if the converts eat the bread,
(Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953); April D. DeConick, Voices of the Mystics: Early Chris-
tian Discourse in the Gospels of John and Thomas and Other Ancient Christian Literature,
JSNTSup 157 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 128–131.
30 DeConick, “Jesus Revealed: The Dynamics of Early Christian Mysticism,” 317; eadem, Voices
of the Mystics, 109–132.
31 1John 2:20.
32 1John 4:13.
33 John 3:5.
34 John 3.22–36.
35 John 3:3–8.
36 John 3:3, 5.
37 John 4:7–15.
38 John 6:35, 41, 51.
20 deconick
they will live forever.39 The same is true of Jesus’ blood, which must be drunk
for the converts to have life everlasting.40 Eating and drinking sacred food, here
the body and blood of Christ, results in nothing less than the incorporation of
Christ within the convert. This is reflected in Jesus’ words, “Whoever eats my
flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him (ὁ τρώγων μου τὴν σάρκα
καὶ πίνων μου τὸ αἷμα ἐν ἐμοὶ μένει κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ).”41
Christ’s Spirit, indwelt in baptism and regularly incorporated with each
eucharist meal eaten, gives life.42 These sacramental technologies of mysticism
integrate the convert’s spirit with Christ’s Spirit, which is God’s Image or Glory.
The amalgamation of God’s Image unites the convert directly with Christ, and
consequently with the Father. According to Jesus, this makes them all perfectly
one: κἀγὼ τὴν δόξαν ἣν δέδωκάς μοι δέδωκα αὐτοῖς, ἵνα ὦσιν ἓν καθὼς ἡμεῖς ἕν· ἐγὼ
ἐν αὐτοῖς καὶ σὺ ἐν ἐμοί, ἵνα ὦσιν τετελειωμένοι εἰς ἕν.43 It births the convert’s spirit
anew as the Glory, making it possible for the convert to see God’s kingdom and
enter it. In the end, the goal of the sacramental mysticism in the Gospel of John
is salvation, the movement of the initiate from a life of darkness in a dark cos-
mos as a sinner to a life of light within the kingdom of God as a child of the light.
In subsequent early Christian contexts, this understanding of baptism and
eucharist as sacramental technologies of mysticism persist. Ignatius of Antioch
calls the eucharist “the medicine of immortality (φάρμακον ἀθανασίας)” because
it is the antidote for death. The consumption of the divine body and blood is
what makes it possible for the convert “to live in Jesus Christ forever (ζῆν ἐν
Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ διὰ παντός).”44 It is this cultic rite that unites the worshiper with
Christ.45
Justin Martyr considers the eucharist a technology of transmutation (μετα-
βολή), when the convert’s own flesh and blood are changed by eating the flesh
and blood of Jesus.46 Justin interprets the eucharist against the backdrop of Isa-
iah LXX 33:16–17, as the occasion that provides the convert with a vision of Jesus,
“Bread shall be given to him, and his water sure. A king with glory, you shall see.”
39 John 6:51.
40 John 6:53–55.
41 John 6:56.
42 John 6:63.
43 John 17:22–23a.
44 Ignatius, Ephesians 20. Bart D. Ehrman, ed., The Apostolic Fathers, LCL 24 (2 vols.; Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 1.240. English translation mine.
45 Ignatius, Philadelphians 4 (Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, 1.286).
46 Justin, 1 Apology 66. Miroslav Marcovich, ed., Iustini Martyris: Apologiae Pro Christianis,
PTS 38 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994), 127.
The eucharist fulfills this prophecy as a vision of Jesus set before the faithful in
the rite, or as preparation for a future vision of Jesus as a consequence of the
rite.47
The most remarkable development of baptism and eucharist as mystery
rites is within Valentinian gnostic circles. They practiced a second baptism
called “redemption” which they believed bestowed the Spirit.48 This ceremony
involved anointing or chrism. According to them, since Messiah or Christ
means “anointed one,” the second baptism changed their status from normal
Christians to Christs: ⲡⲁⲉⲓ ⲅⲁⲣ ⲟⲩⲕⲉⲧⲓ ⲟⲩ[ⲭⲣⲏ]ⲥⲧ[ⲓ]ⲁⲛⲟⲥ ⲡⲉ ⲁⲗⲗⲁ ⲟⲩⲭⲣ̅ⲥ̅ ⲡⲉ.49
It united them with the perfect light of the Spirit.50 Distinct from the baptism
of psychic Christians which purified the soul (psyche) of people who converted
to non-Valentinian Christianity, the second baptism was an advanced rite that
fully and immediately redeemed the spirits of those joining the Valentinian
ranks of the church, making them pneumatic or spiritual Christians. The first
baptism is associated with John the Baptist’s water immersions in the Jordan,
while second baptism is linked to Jesus’ baptism by fire.51 This special rite was
believed to bring about the ascension of the initiate’s spirit into the transcen-
dent realm, an ecstatic experience which culminated in a sacred union with
God or an angelic mate.52
For Valentinian Christians the eucharist also was extra special because
Christ as the “Perfect Man (ⲡⲧⲉⲗⲓⲟⲥ ⲣ̄ⲣⲱⲙⲉ)” was the bread brought down from
47 Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 70.4. Philipp Bobichon, ed., Justin Martyr. Dialogue avec
Tryphon, Volume 1. Paradosis 47/1 (Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2003), 378.
48 April D. DeConick, The Gnostic New Age: How A Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized
Religion From Antiquity to Today (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 233–236.
Cf. Elaine Pagels, “Ritual in the Gospel of Philip,” in John D. Turner and Anne McGuire,
eds., The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years: Proceedings of the 1995 Society of Biblical
Literature Commemoration, NHMS 44 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 280–292. Other treatments of
baptism in Valentinian texts include Einar Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of
the “Valentinians,” NHMS 60 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 333–414, and Hugo Lundhaug, Images of
Rebirth: Cognitive Poetics and Transformational Soteriology in the Gospel of Philip and the
Exegesis on the Soul, NHMS 73 (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
49 Gospel of Philip NHC II,3 67.20–27. Bentley Layton, ed., Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7 together
with XIII,2*, BRIT. LIB. OR. 4926(1), and P.OXY. 1, 654, 655, Volume 1. NHS 20 (Leiden: Brill,
1989), 174, 176.
50 Gospel of Philip NHC II,3 69.5–15. (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 178, 180), 70.5–10
(Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 182).
51 Luke 12:50 and Mark 10:38, quoted in Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 1.21.2; see also Valen-
tinian Fragments NHC XI.2 41.10–11, 21–23.
52 Valentinian Fragments NHC XI.2 42.28–30; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.21.2, 3.15.2; Gospel
of Philip NHC II.3 69.7–8, 70.2–10.
22 deconick
heaven.53 The Valentinians believed that they were nourished with the food of
the Perfect Man, which is Jesus’ flesh. The cup from which they drank was filled
with the Spirit of the Perfect Man. When they drank it, they received the “Living
Man (ⲡⲧⲉⲗⲉⲓⲟⲥ ⲣ̄ⲣⲱⲙⲉ)” as a garment.54
Garbed in this fantastic body, believers were made invisible to the archons
who populated the heavens and tried to hinder the passage of the soul. Cloaked
in Jesus’ body of invisibility, they were able to move unchallenged through the
spheres and unite with their angelic twins at death.55 There is a report that Mar-
cus the Valentinian used the invisibility Helmet of Hades in his redemption
ceremony, putting it on his converts so that they would escape judgment when
they died. With this cloaking device, they immediately would be caught by
Sophia and conducted into the Pleromic bridal chamber where they embraced
their angelic twins in holy matrimony.
While the eucharist in these cases is death preparation, it has immedi-
ate effects as a sacramental pathway of mysticism too. It is recorded that the
eucharistic words used by the Valentinians included this prayer: “O One who
united with the perfect light as the holy spirit unite too the angels with us as
(our) images (ⲡⲉⲛⲧⲁϩϩⲱⲧ̅ⲣ̅ ⲙ̄ⲡⲧⲉⲗⲉⲓⲟⲥ ⲡⲟⲩⲟⲉⲓⲛ ⲉⲡⲡⲛ̅ⲁ̅ ⲉⲧⲟⲩⲁⲁⲃ ϩⲟⲧⲣ̄ ⲛ̄ⲁⲅ-
ⲅⲉⲗⲟⲥ ⲉⲣⲟⲛ ϩⲱⲱⲛ ⲁ ⲛϩⲓⲕⲱⲛ).”56 Marcus’ cup ceremony included a similar
petition for immediate unification with the angelic bridegrooms.
My wish is for you to share in the grace that I have (Μεταδοῦναί σοι θέλω τῆς
ἐμῆς Χάριστος). Indeed the Father of all is constantly looking upon your
angel who is in his presence (ἐπειδὴ ὁ Πατὴρ τῶν ὅλων τὸν Ἄγγελόν σου διὰ
παντὸς βλέπει πρὸ προσώπου αὐτοῦ). But the place of the Mighty (Angel)
is in us (Ὁ δὲ τόπος τοῦ Μεγέθους ἐν ἡμῖν ἐστι). We must be restored to
one (δεῖ ἡμᾶς εἰς τὸ ἓν καταστῆναι). First, from me and through me, receive
grace (Λάμβανε πρῶτον ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ καὶ δι’ ἐμοῦ τὴν Χάριν). Prepare yourself as
a bride awaiting her bridegroom, so that you may be what I am and I may
be what you are (Εὐτρέπισον σεαυτὴν ὡς νύμφη ἐκδεχομένη τὸν νυμφίον ἑαυ-
τῆς, ἵνα ἔσῃ ὃ ἐγὼ καὶ ἐγὼ ὃ σύ). Consecrate the seed of light in your bridal
53 Gospel of Philip NHC II,3 55:11–14 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 150).
54 Gospel of Philip NHC II,3 75.20–21 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 192). Cf. 56:33–57:9
(Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 152, 154); 70:5–10 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–
7, 178, 180).
55 Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 1.21.5. Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, eds. Irénée de
Lyon, Contre les Hérésies, Livre 1, Volume 2. SC 264 (Paris: Cerf, 1979), 304–309; Gospel of
Philip NHC II,3 76:23–30; 86:6–11.
56 Gospel of Philip NHC II,3 58:11–16 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 156). English trans-
lation mine.
chamber (Καθίδρυσον ἐν τῷ νυμφῶνί σου τὸ σπέρμα τοῦ φωτός). From me,

receive (your) bridegroom (Λάβε παρ’ ἐμοῦ τὸν νυμφίον). And hold him and
be held by him (καὶ χώρησον αὐτὸν καὶ χωρήθητι ἐν αὐτῷ). Behold grace has
descended upon you (Ἰδοὺ ἡ Χάρις κατῆλθεν ἐπὶ σέ).57
Mysticism as a sacrament in early Christianity is not confined to these exam-

ples. In fact, it underlies Christian cultic practice generally, especially in the
east (and prior to Protestantism).
4 Mysticism as Schooling
Mysticism as sacrament is not the only pathway of mysticism developed in

early Christianity. Clement of Alexandria, for instance, is the primary witness
among the early Christians of mysticism as a pathway of schooling or paideia,
after the fashion of Platonic paideia, which taught the moral progress of the
soul.58 Clement builds this mode on top of the sacramental, which is what
gives the person the capability to participate in the training in the first place.
According to Clement, a person becomes a Christian by undergoing baptism
and partaking regularly in eucharist meals. Clement understands that these
cultic rites represent a sacramental pathway of mysticism available to every-
one universally. After conversion, however, the new Christian is made into the
ideal Christian, through a progressive process of training and alignment of the
soul with the Lord Jesus, God’s Image and Glory. The result of this training is a
life lived in constant contemplation and mystic vision.59
According to Clement, it is at baptism that the Holy Spirit descends into the
convert. This newly resident Spirit illuminates as much as it causes past trans-
gressions to be cleansed, because it wipes away the grime of sin, which has
obscured the human’s ability to see God. With the eyes of the soul wiped clean
and illuminated by the Spirit, the convert gains the ability to focus on the con-
57 Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 1.13.3 (Rousseau and Doutreleau, Irénée de Lyon, Contre les
Hérésies, 194–195). English translation mine.
58 Cf. Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith, eds., Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual
Power (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994); Denise Kimber Buell, Making Chris-
tians: Clement of Alexandria and the Rhetoric of Legitimacy (New Haven: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1999).
59 Salvatore R.C. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 142–189; Buell, Making Christians; April D. DeCon-
ick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and Its Growth (Lon-
don: T&T Clark, 2005), 225–231.
24 deconick
templation of God. The baptized convert now has the capacity to behold the
holy light, and by the scrubbed eye alone, to contemplate the divine as an ἐπό-
πτης, an initiate admitted to the highest mysteries.60 This illumination makes
the convert God’s child and yields immortality as a gift of grace. The instant
the light is received in baptism is the instant of perfection, when the convert is
separated from death and delivered from darkness to a new birth.61
After baptism, new converts regularly join the eucharist meal, consuming
the body and blood of the Lord. According to Clement, to drink of the blood of
Jesus is to partake in immortality, when his Spirit mixes with the human spirit
in the eucharist, the act of grace. This is performed by mixing water (which rep-
resents the human spirit) with wine (which represents the Spirit). When this is
drunk, the convert becomes “mystically compounded (συγκιρνάντος μυστικῶς)”
with the Spirit on a regular basis, so that his or her soul is welded to the Spirit
and inspired by it continually.62
This sacramental shoring up of the human soul is what makes it possible for
the convert to embark on the journey to perfection, to learn to live the life of
an ideal Christian in imitation of Jesus. In Clement’s system, the Lord Jesus is
both the physician who cures the soul via the sacraments (which he calls παρ-
μάκοι or medicines) and the pedagogue who trains the soul via instruction and
example.63
With this, we see Clement’s understanding of the making of a Christian.
While Clement knows that Christian sacraments serve as sacramental tech-
nologies of mysticism that translate the initiate from sinner to saved, from
darkness to divine illumination, he does not leave the Christian stranded as
a new convert. Mysticism shifts into another pathway entirely, when Clement
relates how ideal Christians are made after baptism.
The baptized Christian is, in Clement’s mind, a newly birthed child ready
for paideia or training and paidagôgia or discipline.64 Christ is both model and
disciplinarian, the Image of God that must be assimilated and the teacher who
must be obeyed.65 The schooling is progressive, beginning with the realign-
ment of the soul to moral excellence and the crucifixion of the impulses and
60 Clement of Alexandria, Instructor 1.6. Miroslav Marcovich, ed., Clementis Alexandrini

Paedagogus, SVC 61 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 19.
61 Clement of Alexandria, Instructor 1.6.
62 Clement of Alexandria, Instructor 2.2 (Marcovich, Clementis Alexandrini Paedagogus,
79).
63 Clement of Alexandria, Instructor 1.1, 1.6, 1.8 etc. (Marcovich, Clementis Alexandrini Paed-
agogus, 3, 20, 40 etc.).
65 Clement of Alexandria, Instructor 1.2; 3.1.
passions, all in imitation of Christ.66 Clements understands the adoption of an

extreme form of virtuous living in imitation of Christ to be the beginning of
pistis or faith.67
The achievement of virtue and a rigorous apatheia by crucifying lust or
epithumia reorients the soul toward God, opening up the soul to contemplation
of the Divine.68 This is the beginning of gnosis or knowledge of God directly.69
Clement describes the gnostics as ideal catholic Christians who live the “gnos-
tic life (τόν γνωστικὸν),” trained to “draw God towards themselves (ἐπισπώμενοι
τὸν θεὸν ἐαυτοὺς)” and to “imperceptibly bring themselves to God (ἔλαθον προσ-
αγόμενοι πρὸς τὸν θεόν).” The gnostics are those who live the contemplative life
fully. As they worship God, they attend to the divine within, the Image of God
embossed on their souls.70 They have come to understand the Socratic injunc-
tion to “know yourself” as a directive to come face to face with their true nature
as images of the Divine.71
Because of their own purification and restraint, they are able to behold the
holy God with holiness. They are self-controlled, contemplating the Divine
uninterruptedly. They have been “as far as possible assimilated to God (ἐξο-
μοιοῦται κατὰ δύναμιν θεῷ).”72 They are “‘face to face’ initiated into the beatific
vision («πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον» τὴν μακαρίαν θέαν μυηθῇ).”73 They ascend
into heaven, surpassing “each of the holy ranks … reaching places better than
the better places, embracing the divine vision not in mirrors or by means of
mirrors, but in the transcendently clear and absolutely pure insatiable vision
which is the privilege of intensely loving souls.” The result is “converse with
God … being made like the Lord.”74
This assimilation, Clement believed, is a transformation achieved as far as is
humanly possible in the here and now. Utter assimilation had to be reserved to
66 Clement of Alexandria, Instructor 1.12; Cf. Miscellanies 1.18, 24; 2.20; 4.3–4.6 (Otto Stählin,
ed., Clemens Alexandrinus, Zweiter Band: Stromata Buch I–VI, rev. by Ludwig Fruchtel.
GCS 52 [Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1960], 56–58; 99–103; 169–181; 251–256, 259–267); 5.11
(370–377); 7.3, 16.
67 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 1.1 (Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, 3–13).
68 Clement of Alexandria, Instructor 1.12 (Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, 35–36).
70 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 4.23 (Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, 313–316); 7.3.
71 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 1.14, 19 (Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, 37–41, 58–62);
2.15 (Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, 146–151); 5.4 (Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, 338–
342).
72 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 1.19 (Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, 58–62); 4.23
(Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, 313–316); 6.12 (Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, 480–484).
74 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 7.3; cf. 7.10, 11; Exhortation 11.
26 deconick
the end when the resurrection occurred.75 While the gnostic is already singing
in the choirs of angels, this condition is not eternal yet. The gnostic is still
detained on earth.76
The goal of Christian paideia is to “improve the soul” and train it after Christ’s
example to be virtuous so that it might gain its wings and ascend back to its lofty
origins.77 In this, Clement echoes Platonic sentiment about the moral regen-
eration of the soul. Yet the mysticism of Clement’s paideia is not a mysticism
directed at salvation, as a curative for the soul. Clement is very clear that conver-
sion already achieved this when the initiate was baptized into the church and
eats the eucharist meal. The soul is healed by Christian initiation and nothing
more is needed for its salvation.
So Clement’s mysticism as schooling is developed for the spiritual advance-
ment of the saved and their progressive assimilation into God’s Image before
their deaths and before the eschaton, at least as far as is humanly possible. It
reinforced Clement’s Christocentric theology as well as what he valued in terms
of Christian morals and lifestyle standards. What Clement’s school expected
of its mystic Christians was counter to normal philosophical conventions of
paideia. To be made into a Christian was to be remade, to break down the for-
mer self and rebuild the ideal self. It was a traumatic turnaround of normative
Roman preferences particularly in the area of renunciation of the flesh and the
destruction of epithumia. While marriage was permitted for the sake of pro-
creation (a necessity!), all lust had to be extinguished even from the sexual act
itself. For Clement, this intense schooling jumpstarts what will be the final des-
tiny of all Christians, their transformation into God’s Image, which is Christ.78
5 Mysticism as Daily Regimen
Closely related to mysticism as schooling is mysticism as daily regimen. In this

mode, the eschatological promises of Paradise have been collapsed completely
into the here and now, so that Christians must live the extreme unconventional
lives of angels while on earth. The main experience that originally fostered the
development of this pathway of mysticism in early Christianity was the Non-
Event, that Jesus did not return imminently as early communities expected,
75 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 6.17 (Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, 508–515); In-

structor 1.6.
76 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 7.12.
78 Harry O. Maier, “Clement of Alexandria and the Care of the Self,” JAAR 62:3 (1994): 719–745.
especially in the wake of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. When the
kingdom did not come, to manage the excessive anxiety and cognitive disso-
nance some Christians rewrote their eschatological expectations, internalizing
the promises of the eschaton into a pathway of mysticism.79
These Christians rationalized that the eschaton had already begun with
Jesus’ resurrection. In response to Jesus’ teaching that in the age of the resurrec-
tion we will live like angels, they felt they needed to live like they were living in
Paradise now, as resurrected beings, primordial Adams, or angels.80 As beings
worthy of Paradise, they would live daily in God’s presence, coming to know
God in the most immediate and direct sense everyday.
This pathway of mysticism as daily regimen was particularly prevalent early
on in eastern Syria. It is characterized by the additions of accretions in the
Gospel of Thomas that reformat an earlier gospel of eschatological sayings of
Jesus into a newer gospel with a mystical orientation.81 The resurrected or “liv-
ing” Jesus speaks in this gospel, asking Christians to interpret his words care-
fully in order to put aside death: ⲛⲁⲉⲓ ⲛⲉ ⲛ̄ϣⲁϫⲉ ⲉⲑⲏⲡ ⲉⲛⲧⲁ ⲓ̄ⲥ̅ ⲉⲧⲟⲛϩ ϫⲟⲟⲩ
ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁϥⲥϩⲁⲓⲥⲟⲩ ⲛ̄6ⲓ ⲇⲓⲇⲩⲙⲟⲥ ⲓⲟⲩⲇⲁⲥ ⲑⲱⲙⲁⲥ. ⲁⲩⲱ ⲡⲉϫⲁϥ ϫⲉ ⲡⲉⲧⲁϩⲉ ⲉⲑⲉⲣⲙⲏ-
ⲛⲉⲓⲁ ⲛ̄ⲛⲉⲉⲓϣⲁϫⲉ ϥⲛⲁϫⲓ ϯⲡⲉ ⲁⲛ ⲙ̄ⲡⲙⲟⲩ.82 His words point to the recreation of
Eden within the experience of the Christian community. Christians are encour-
aged by his words to take up an ascetic lifestyle in imitation of Adam before he
sinned.83
It is clear from the accretions that these Christians understood sexual renun-
ciation and celibacy to represent Adam’s original state before Eve was taken
from his side and all hell broke loose. So they honored the single unmarried life
of the monachoi, the solitary men and women that made up their community.
They taught that Christians are required to renounce the world, to fast from
the world, and to guard against all temptations and worldliness: ⲉⲧⲉ⟨ⲧⲛ̄⟩ⲧⲙ̅ⲣ̅-
ⲛⲏⲥⲧⲉⲩⲉ ⲉⲡⲕⲟⲥⲙⲟⲥ ⲧⲉⲧⲛⲁϩⲉ ⲁⲛ ⲉⲧⲙⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲣⲟ.84 They were encouraged to con-
79 On the cognitive dissonance of the Non-Event, see John G. Gager, Kingdom and Commu-
nity: The Social World of Early Christianity (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1975), 20–65.
80 Matthew 22.29–31; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34–36.
81 April D. DeConick, Seek to See Him: Ascent and Vision Mysticism in the Gospel of Thomas,
SVC 33 (Leiden: Brill, 1996); eadem, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of
the Gospel and Its Growth (London: T&T Clark, 2005). For a summary, see April D. DeCon-
ick, “The Gospel of Thomas,” ExpTim 118 (2007): 469–479.
82 Gospel of Thomas prologue and saying 1 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 52–53).
83 Gospel of Thomas 4.1, 3; 11.2–4; 16.4; 21.1–4, 6–9; 22; 23.2; 27.1; 37; 49; 64.12; 75; 85; 101; 105;
106; 110; 111.2; 114 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 54–55, 56–57, etc.). For this inter-
pretation, see individual sayings in the commentary, DeConick, “What is Early Jewish and
Christian Mysticism?”
84 Gospel of Thomas 27 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 64–65).
28 deconick
quer their passions as Jesus had and even transcend the human condition
of male and female: ϣⲓⲛⲁ ⲉⲧⲉⲧⲛⲁⲉⲓⲣⲉ ⲙ̄ⲫⲟⲟⲩⲧ ⲙⲛ̄ ⲧⲥϩⲓⲙⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡⲓⲟⲩⲁ.85 They
had to turn back the clock to the sexual innocence of childhood (to pristine
Eden) and renounce their bodies (the garments of skins given to Adam and
Eve after the fall) in order to be able to see the Son of God: “When you strip
naked without shame, take up your garment, put them under your feet like
little children, and trample on them. Then you will see the Son of the Living
One and you will not be afraid” (ϩⲟⲧⲁⲛ ⲉⲧⲉⲧⲛ̄ϣⲁⲕⲉⲕ ⲧⲏⲩⲧⲛ̄ ⲉϩⲏⲩ ⲙ̄ⲡⲉⲧⲛ̄-
ϣⲓⲡⲉ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲧⲛ̄ϥⲓ ⲛ̄ⲛⲉⲧⲛ̄ϣⲧⲏⲛ ⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲧⲛ̄ⲕⲁⲁⲩ ϩⲁ ⲡⲉⲥⲏⲧ ⲛ̄ⲛⲉⲧⲛ̄ⲟⲩⲉⲣⲏⲧⲉ ⲛ̄ⲑⲉ
ⲛ̄ⲛⲓⲕⲟⲩⲉⲓ ⲛ̄ϣⲏⲣⲉ ϣⲏⲛ ⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲧⲛ̄ϫⲟⲡϫ̅ⲡ̅ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟⲟⲩ ⲧⲟⲧⲉ [ⲧⲉⲧ]ⲛⲁⲛⲁⲩ ⲉⲡϣⲏⲣⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡⲉ-
ⲧⲟⲛϩ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲧⲉⲧⲛⲁⲣ̄ ϩⲟⲧⲉ ⲁⲛ).86 They were encouraged to study and mediate
on the words of Jesus to vanquish death, and to partake of the eucharist which
rendered them Jesus’ equals.87 Their lives were not normal lives, but lives that
had crossed the boundaries of conventional Roman society into no-man’s land
where divinities resided. Within their communities, they were creating heaven
on earth.
Though technologies of extreme body control, disciplined study, and regular
participation in the sacraments, they sought revelation and vision. These tech-
nologies prompted heavenly journeys to see Jesus and worship before God’s
throne.88 Knowledge of the passage through the heavenly realms appears to
have been taught and memorized.89 The goal was for the mystic to gaze upon
God before death, in order not to die: “Gaze upon the Living One while you
are alive, in case you die and then seek to see him, and will not be able to
see (him) (ϭⲱϣⲧ ⲛ̄ⲥⲁ ⲡⲉⲧⲟⲛϩ ϩⲱⲥ ⲉⲧⲉⲧⲛ̄ⲟⲛϩ ϩⲓⲛⲁ ϫⲉ ⲛⲉⲧⲙ̄ⲙⲟⲩ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲧⲛ̄-
ϣⲓⲛⲉ ⲉⲛⲁⲩ ⲉⲣⲟϥ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲧⲉⲧⲛⲁϣϭⲙ̄ ϭⲟⲙ ⲁⲛ ⲉⲛⲁⲩ).”90 Once ascended, the mystic
would meet his or her divine twin or self, the Image that had been lost when
Adam sinned.91
85 Gospel of Thomas 22 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 62–63).

86 Gospel of Thomas 37 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 68–69); cf. 21.6–8; 27; 110 (Lay-
ton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 62–63; 64–65; 92–93). Cf. DeConick, The Original Gospel
of Thomas, 112–113; 129–132; 290–291.
87 Gospel of Thomas 13, 61, 108 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 58–59; 74–77; 90–91). Cf.
DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas, 83–87; 200–204; 287–288.
88 Gospel of Thomas 15, 37 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 60–61; 68–69). Cf. DeConick,
The Original Gospel of Thomas, 92–93.
89 Gospel of Thomas 50 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 72–73). Cf. DeConick, The Orig-
inal Gospel of Thomas, 180–182.
90 Gospel of Thomas 59 (Layton 1989, 74–75). Cf. DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas,
197–198.
91 Gospel of Thomas 84 (Layton 1989, 84–85). Cf. DeConick, The Original Gospel of Thomas,
248–249.
The story here is of a Christian community in Syria whose members no

longer thought it prudent to wait for death or for the eschaton to enter the
kingdom and be immortalized. Now that the age of the resurrection was upon
them, instead of waiting for heaven to come to them, they decided to invade
Eden, believing that God’s eschatological promises were available to them in
the present. With the collapse of the eschaton into a pathway of mysticism
based on the daily regimen of extreme body control and celibacy, they thought
they had become Adam and Eve in Paradise, that they were living in God’s pres-
ence already.
With the possible exception of Bardaisan and the Quqites, the Christians of
the Gospel of Thomas were not unlike Christians throughout the rest of east-
ern Syria, who for the first couple of hundred years demanded celibacy and
asceticism as a prerequisite to join the church.92 The early Syrian literature from
Nag Hammadi to the apocryphal acts to the patristic records show us a form of
Christianity in Syria that was severely ascetic, honoring the solitary single life
over the married. For these Christians, baptism occurred only after the pros-
elytes had proven they could live as celibate single people. For some like the
Elchasaites, once baptized, they endured daily washings and other renuncia-
tions of the body to regularly extinguish their passions, which they felt made it
possible for them to restore their souls to the glorious Image of God and live as
angels.93
The restriction of this solitary lifestyle to a special group of Christians did
not occur until Aphrahat (270–345CE). In his writings we begin to hear about
a privileged monastic class (the “sons and daughters of the covenant”) along-
side the otherwise married members of the Syrian church. It is not surprising
that this is the same time period that the eremitic life and the cenobitic life
were emerging in Egypt as alternatives to the married life. It is within the clois-
92 Arthur Vööbus, Celibacy, A Requirement for Admission to Baptism in the Early Syrian Church
(Stockholm: Papers of the Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 1951); S.P. Brock, “Early
Syrian Asceticism,” Numen 20 (1973), 1–19; Robert Murray, Symbols of the Church and King-
dom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975),
4–24; Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early
Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 83–102; Susan Ashbrook Harvey,
Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the Lives of the Eastern Saints (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1990). See also Hendrik Jan Willem Drijvers, Bardaisan
of Edessa, Studia Semitica Neerlandica 6 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1966), 190 and 226; idem,
“Quq and the Quqites,”Numen 14 (1967), 104–129; idem, Cults and Beliefs at Edessa (Leiden:
Brill, 1980).
93 Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, “Elchasaites and Their Book,” in Antti Marjanen and Petri Luoma-
nen, eds., A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics,” SVC 76 (Leiden: Brill, 2008),
335–364.
30 deconick
ter that mysticism as a daily regimen eventually becomes the prerogative of

monks and nuns throughout medieval Christendom.
6 Mysticism as Personal Therapy
The use of mysticism as ritual therapy to heal the soul is most developed
within Christian gnostic circles. I exercise here my thesis that the gnostic is a
new cognitive structure and category, manifesting in the first-century Mediter-
ranean region as an emergent form of spirituality, a metaphysical worldview
that engages multiple religious affiliations, reformatting existing religions and
generating new religious movements.94 As a spirituality, it is transtheistic in its
theological orientation. God is transcendent (beyond the cosmos and beyond
all other gods) and only knowable through direct experience prompted by
particular rites of initiation. The human spirit is understood to be an innate
extension of this transcendent God, and thus capable of knowing him. While
these groups have left behind a variety of stories about the fall of the soul/spirit
and sets of rituals they believed transported the soul/spirit back to its source,
behind the accounts and ceremonies is the conviction that the true self has
been separated from its primal root and lives in a state of anxiety and terror.
The only thing that could bring healing is initiation into God’s mysteries, when
the divided self can be reunited with its transcendent source.
In their accounts, the primal God is a transcendent being who overflows like
a fountain or generates divinities in his own image. This process of differentia-
tion, when the One becomes the Many, generates different realms of existence,
including our own. This process of differentiation did not result in clones of
the transcendent God, but copies that eventually deteriorate or become sev-
ered as they individuate. The process produces trauma. Left in the wake of
God’s individuation is anxiety, fear, terror, suffering, isolation and remorse.
And a human self, considered by gnostics, to be God-within. This true self is
unconscious, trapped in psychic and bodily layers of delusions, emotions and
damaging appetites. It is alienated, damaged by a primordial split it could not
control. Its alienation is the cause of our deepest human anxieties and fears.
94 April D. DeConick, The Ancient New Age: How Gnostic Spirituality Revolutionized Religion
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). For a more detailed presentation of this the-
sis, see April D. DeConick, “Crafting Gnosis: Gnostic Spirituality in the Ancient New Age,”
in Kevin Corrigan and Tuomas Rasimus, eds., Gnosticism, Platonism and the Late Ancient
World: Essays in Honor of John D. Turner, NHMS 82 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 285–305 in addition
to DeConick, The Ancient New Age.
The bottom line is that the anxieties and fears that plague all of us live deep
within our unconscious, where the deep self, the God-within is buried and
asleep.
Many gnostic groups used several types of ceremonies to cure this trauma,
to return the divided self to the transcendent God. Therapeutic rituals of the
first type are quickening ceremonies. These types of ceremonies were designed
to awaken the person’s God-part (most often referred to as the spirit) from its
slumber or unconsciousness. These rituals were often conceived as underworld
journeys, when the incubating initiate was awakened in Hades, usually by a
divine being who had come from the transcendent world as an emissary.
In the Naassene performance, for instance, the initiates are awakened with
the smack of Hermes’ or Christ’s staff and then baptized or birthed from the
primal waters.95 Among Sethians, the call of the goddess Forethought star-
tles them awake to their first baptism, which they call the Five Seals. In this
ceremony, the goddess Forethought calls out to the initiate who sleeps in the
darkness of Hades, “Get up from the deep sleep ([ⲧⲱⲟ]ⲩⲛ ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ϩⲙ̅ ⲫⲓⲛⲏⲃ
ⲉⲧϩⲟⲣ[ϣ])!” The initiate awakens and demands to know who calls him. Fore-
thought responds, “I am Forethought of pure light … Arise and remember you
are the one who has heard (ⲁⲛⲟⲕ ⲧⲉ ⲧⲡⲣⲟⲛⲟⲓⲁ ⲙ̄ⲡⲟⲩⲟⲉⲓⲛ ⲉⲧⲃ̄ⲃⲏⲩ … ⲧⲱⲟⲩⲛⲕ
ⲁⲩⲱ ⲛ̄ⲕⲣ̄ ⲡⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ ϫⲉ ⲛ̄ⲧⲟⲕ ⲡⲉⲛⲧⲁϩⲥⲱⲧⲙ̄)!” Forethought seals him in luminous
water so that death may no longer have power over him (ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁⲉⲓⲧⲟⲩⲛⲟⲩⲥ
ⲙ̄ⲙⲟϥ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁⲉⲓⲫⲣⲁⲅⲓⲍⲉ ⲙ̄ⲙⲟϥ ϩⲛ̄ ⲡⲟⲩⲟⲉⲓⲛ ⲙ̄ⲡⲙⲟⲟⲩ ϩⲛ̄ ϯⲉ ⲛ̄ⲥⲫⲣⲁⲅⲓⲥ ϫⲉⲕⲁⲁⲥ
ⲛ̄ⲛⲉⲡⲙⲟⲩ ϭⲛ̄ϭⲁⲙ ⲉⲣⲟϥ ϫⲛ̄ ⲙ̄ⲡⲓⲛⲁⲩ).96 The Peratic initiate is awakened in the
bowels of hell, only to find himself struggling against Kronos who controls the
waters of primal chaos. The prayer opens with these words:
Ἐγὼ φωνὴ ἐξυπνισμοῦ ἐν τῷ αἰῶνι τῆς νυκτός.

λοιπὸν ἄρχομαι γυμνοῦν τὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ Χάους δύναμιν.
ἡ δύναμις τοῦ ἀβυσσικοῦ θολοῦ,
ἡ τὸν πηλὸν ἀναβαστάζουσα τοῦ ἀφθάρτου ἀχανοῦς διύγρου,
ἡ τοῦ σπάσματος ὅλη δύναμις …
95 Hippolytus, Refutation 5.7,19; 5.7,30–34; 5.8,42–43; 5.9,21–22, Miroslav Marcovich, ed., Hip-
polytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, PTS 25 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986), 147; 150–
152; 163–164; 170.
96 Apocryphon of John NHC II,1 30.33–31.25 (Michael Waldstein and Frederik Wisse, eds., The
Apocryphon of John: Synopsis of Nag Hammadi Codices II,1; III,1; and IV,1 with BG 8502,2,
NHMS 33 [Leiden: Brill, 1995], 170–175); Cf. Trimorphic Protennoia NHC XIII,1 36.4–26;
40.30–37 (Charles Hedrick, ed., Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII, NHS 28 [Leiden: Brill,
1990], 404–405; 412–413).
32 deconick
I am the voice of one who has awakened from sleep in the realm of
night.
Now I begin to struggle with the Power that has sprung from Chaos,
the Power of the abyss of mud,
what supports the clay of the boundless expanse swollen with water,
the utter Power of the earthquake …97
The goal of these ceremonies is to quicken the human spirit, to make the initi-
ate aware of their authentic God-selves.
Rituals of the second type are cathartic in nature, purging the spirit of
its emotional and psychic accretions. These rituals usually are dramatized as
ascents through the celestial spheres, where each of the archons who created
and control various aspects of the human being are thwarted and overcome.
This was perceived to be a gradual ascent of the soul through the heavenly ter-
ritories of the archons where the initiate came face to face with each demon,
avenged the demon through a powerful prayer, direct naming, and the display
of a potent object or sign. These rituals were meant to strip away everything
that had encumbered and enslaved their true selves in the realm of temporality.
These cathartic ceremonies were conducted gradually, so that initiates moved
through the various heavens and star houses, usually in some ritual sequence.
We have many examples of these cathartic ceremonies, but we have the
most extensive knowledge of one these ceremonies, The Seal, as performed
by Ophian gnostics.98 From the testimony of the Roman philosopher Celsus
and the Christian teacher Origen of Alexandria, we are able to reconstruct the
actual star route that the Ophians journeyed through the demonic territories
of the skies, their prayers of demonic defeat, the secret names of the demons,
and references to the objects they used in this cathartic process.99
97 Hippolytus, Refutation 5.14.1–10 (Marcovich, Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium,

177–180). For English translation of entire hymn, see April D. DeConick, “From the Bowels
of Hell to Draco: The Mysteries of the Peratics,” in Liv Ingeborg Lied and John D. Turner,
eds., Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature:
Ideas and Practices. Studies for Einar Thomassen at Sixty, NHMS 76 (Leiden: Brill, 2012),
3–38 at 7–11.
98 For an extensive recent treatment of the Ophians, see Tuomas Rasimus, Paradise Recon-
sidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence,
NHMS 68 (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
99 April D. DeConick, “The Road for the Soul is Through the Planets: The Mysteries of the
Ophians Mapped,” in April D. DeConick, Gregory Shaw and John D. Turner, eds., Practic-
ing Gnosis: Ritual, Magic, Theurgy and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi, Manichaean and Other
Ancient Literature. Essays in Honor of Birger A. Pearson, NHMS 85 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 37–
74.
The exact route for their soul journey through the Zodiac houses aligns
with the astrological teaching of the second-century Pythagorean philoso-
pher, Numenius. Numenius taught that the soul ascended through the star-
gate Capricorn and makes its way around the nocturnal houses from Capri-
corn through Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and exits via Cancer. The
prayers of the Ophian gnostics follow this same pattern (thus there is no prayer
to the archon of the sun and no mistake in Origen’s report!), beginning their
flight at the Capricorn gate with an encounter with its ruler, Ialdabaoth. The
god is lion-shaped and ferocious. The initiate stands before him and defeats
him with this prayer:
Βασιλέα μονότροπον, δεσμὸν ἀβλεψίας, λήθην ἀπερίσκεπτον ἀσπάζομαι, πρώ-

την δύναμιν, πνεύματι προνοίας καὶ σοφίᾳ τηρουμένην· ἔνθεν εἰλικρινὴς πέμπο-
μαι, φωτὸς ἤδη μέρος υἱοῦ καὶ πατρός· ἡ χάρις συνέστω μοι, ναὶ πάτερ, συνέ-
στω.100
Greetings! Solitary King, Bond of Blindness, Reckless Forgetting, First

Power. I am guarded by the Spirit of Pronoia and by Sophia. Now I am
sent forth pure. I am already part of the light of the Son and the Father.
May Grace be with me. Yes, Father, may it be with me.101
Likewise the initiate overpowers Ialdabaoth again as ruler of the stargate

Aquarius, then Iao Lord of the planet Jupiter and ruler of Pisces. Following this
are prayers to defeat Sabaoth Lord of Mars and the stargate Aries, and then
Astaphaeus King of Venus and the stargate Tauras. At the gate of Gemini, the
initiate takes on the dog-faced Eloaeus, Lord of Mercury. Finally Horaeus the
ass-faced ruler of the moon is vanquished at the stargate Cancer. This system-
atic defeat liberates the soul from the planets and allows for its release into the
transcendent realms.102
The final types of ceremonies that many gnostic groups performed are rit-
uals of maturation and integration. These rituals are set in the transcendent
realms. Once the bodily and psychic accretions have been peeled away, the
spirit ventures into the transcendent realms, where it meets up with other
divinities. The gnostic Justin explains that he personally escorts his initiates
100 Origen, Contra Celsum 6.31. Marcel Borret, ed., Origène contre Celse. Books 5 and 6. Intro-
duction, Texte Critique, Traduction et Notes, volume 3. SC 150 (Paris: Cerf. 1969), 254.
101 Origen, Contra Celsum 6.31. English translation in DeConick, “The Road for the Soul is
Through the Planets,” 49.
102 DeConick, “The Road for the Soul is Through the Planets,” 37–74.
34 deconick
through a star gate at the top of the celestial dome. On the other side sits God,
and next to him is a bath of luminous water quite distinct from the water below
the firmament where both “material and psychic men (οἱ χοικοὶ καὶ ψυχικοὶ
ἄνθρωποι)” bathe. In the transcendent realm, the initiates must bathe in the
“living water (ζῶν ὕδωρ)” in order to become “living men (ζῶντες ἄνθρωποι).”103
The ritual bath in the transcendent spheres transforms the initiate into a living
man, a self-sustaining divinity who is always welcome in God’s presence.
The Sethian gnostics have the most elaborate ceremonies to this end, believ-
ing that the transcendent world of the Father is layered and populated by
divinities who are increasingly like the Father the closer the realm is to him.104
In their maturation ceremonies, the initiates see the divine beings in each
realm. Through special water and robing rituals, enthronements and glorifi-
cations, they are transfigured into each type of spiritual being progressively
from the lowest to the highest rank.105 This progressive transfiguration results
in a divine status so elevated that the human spirit becomes the object of
angelic praise.106 Finally, this transfiguration of the human spirit ends with
its integration into the highest level, the Invisible Spirit, as evinced in Zostri-
anos:
Apophantes with Aphropais the Virgin Light came before me and brought
me into Protophanes, the great male perfect Mind (ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁϥⲉⲓ ⲛⲛⲁϩⲣⲁⲓ ⲛϭⲓ
ⲁ̅ⲡ̅ⲟ̅ⲫ̅ⲁ̅ⲛ̅ⲧ̅ⲏ̅ⲥ̅ ⲙⲛ ⲁ̅ⲫ̅ⲣ̅ⲟ̅ⲡ̅ⲁ̅ⲓ̅ⲥ̅ ⲡⲁⲣⲱⲉⲛⲱⲫⲱⲧⲟⲥ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁϥⲛⲧ ⲉϩⲟⲩⲛ ⲉ ⲡⲓⲡⲣⲱ-
ⲧⲟⲫⲁⲛⲏⲥ ⲛ ⲛⲟϭ ⲛ ϩⲟⲟⲩⲧ ⲛ ⲧⲉⲗⲓⲟⲥ ⲛ ⲛⲟⲩⲥ). I saw all the divinities as they
exist in one (ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁⲓⲛⲁⲩ ⲉ ⲛⲁⲓ ⲧⲏⲣⲟⲩ ⲉⲧⲙⲙⲁⲩ ⲙ ⲡⲣⲏⲧⲉ ⲉⲧⲟⲩϣⲟⲟⲡ ⲙⲙⲟⲥ
ⲛϩⲣⲁⲓ ϩⲛ ⲟⲩⲁ). I united with them all (ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁⲉⲓϩⲱⲧⲡ ⲛⲙⲙⲁⲩ ⲧⲏⲣⲟⲩ). I
blessed the hidden Aeon, the virgin Barbelo and the Invisible Spirit (ⲁⲉⲓ-
ⲥⲙⲟⲩⲉ ⲡⲓⲉⲱⲛ ⲛ ⲕ̅ⲗ̅ⲥ̅ ⲙⲛ ϯⲃ̅ⲁ̅ⲣ̅ⲃ̅ⲏ̅ⲗ̅ⲱ̅ ⲙ ⲡⲁⲣⲑⲉⲛⲟⲥ ⲙⲛ ⲡⲓⲁϩⲟⲣⲁⲧⲟⲛ ⲙ ⲡ̅ⲛ̅ⲁ̅).
103 Hippolytus, Refutation 5.27.1–3 (Marcovich, Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haeresium,

208–209).
104 For recent treatments, see John D. Turner, “From Baptismal Vision to Mystical Union with
the One: The Case of the Sethian Gnostics,” in April D. DeConick, Gregory Shaw, and John
D. Turner, eds., Practicing Gnosis: Ritual, Magic, Theurgy and Liturgy in Nag Hammadi,
Manichaean and Other Ancient Literature. Essays in Honor of Birger A. Pearson, NHMS 85
(Leiden: Brill, 2013), 411–431; Dylan Burns, Apocalypse of an Alien God: Platonism and the
Exile of Sethian Gnosticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 95–
139.
105 Cf. Birger A. Pearson, “Baptism in Sethian Gnostic Texts,” in David Hellholm et al., eds.,
Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity,
BZNW 176/1 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 119–143.
106 Trimorphic Protennoia NHC XIII,1 48.21–35 (Hedrick, Nag Hammadi Codices XI, XII, XIII,
428–429).
I became all-perfect and received power (ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁⲉⲓϣⲱⲡⲉ ⲙ ⲡⲁⲛⲧⲉⲗⲓⲟⲥ

ⲁⲉⲓϫⲓ ϭⲟⲙ). I was written in glory and sealed (ⲁⲩⲥⲁϩⲧ ϩⲙ ⲡⲉⲟⲟⲩ ⲁⲩⲣ
ⲥⲫⲣⲁⲅⲓⲝⲉ ⲙⲙⲟⲉⲓ). I received there a perfect crown (ⲁⲉⲓϫⲓ ⲛ ⲟⲩⲕⲗⲟⲙ ⲛ
ⲧⲉⲗⲓⲟⲥ ⲙ ⲡⲓⲙⲁ ⲉⲧⲙⲙⲁⲩ).107
This integration was envisioned as a noetic ecstasy, something along the lines
of a mind meld between the gnostic’s spirit and God.
For the Naassenes, this final integration into God occurs when the spirit
attains to the “Unoriginate (ἀγέννητος),” as God’s bridegroom. The spirit
becomes “god” when it passes through the third stargate (which is probably
Taurus, since Venus, the third planet, rules this stargate) and enters “the house
of God (οἶκος θεοῦ).”108 This house is the transcendent world, the pleroma,
where the soul and body cannot go during the initiation rites, but only the
naked spirit. In this house, the initiates are fed milk and honey and become
perfect males, a descriptor for the hermaphrodite god, also known as Man or
Adamas.
For other gnostics, this integration is only provisional and temporary, until
some eschatological moment made it permanent. This is the case with the
Valentinian gnostics who seem to have regarded their second baptisms as heav-
enly wedding engagements, when the human spirits become the fiancées to
their twin angels awaiting them in a sphere just outside the transcendent world.
After death, the spirits ascend to this realm and live with their betrothed angels.
At the eschaton, the brides and grooms follow Jesus and his bride Sophia into
the transcendent world, which is transformed into a bridal chamber, and con-
summate their marriages in the noetic ecstasy of divine procreative eroticism.
The Valentinian teacher Theodotus imagines it this way:
Then the spirits, having put off their souls, together with the Mother who
escorts her Bridegroom, escort their bridegrooms who are their angels
(τὸ δὲ ἐντεῦθεν ἀποθέμενα τὰ πνευματικὰ τὰς ψυχὰς ἅμα τῇ μητρὶ κομιζομένῃ
τὸν νυμφίον, κομιζόμενα καὶ αὐτὰ τοὺς νυμφίους τοὺς ἀγγέλους ἑαυτῶν). They
pass into the bridal chamber within the (pleroma’s) limit and they have
a spiritual vision (εἰς τὸν νυμφῶνα ἐντὸς τοῦ Ὅρου εἰσίασι καὶ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ
πνεύματος ὅψιν ἔρχονται). They have become noetic Aeons, in the noetic
107 Cf. Zostrianos NHC VIII,1 129.3–15. John Sieber, ed., Nag Hammadi Codex VIII, NHS 31 (Lei-
den: Brill, 1991), 218–221.
108 Hippolytus, Refutation 5.8.30; 5.8.44–45 (Marcovich, Hippolytus, Refutatio Omnium Haere-
sium, 161;164–165).
36 deconick
and eternal marriages of the syzyge (αἰῶνες νοεροὶ γενόμενα, εἰς τοὺς νοε-
ροὺς καὶ αἰωνίους γάμους τῆς συζυγίας).109
It is within gnostic groups in the second and third centuries that we find mysti-
cism emerging as ritual therapy, to cure the damaged self. Their rituals worked
to progressively advance the spirit from an initial awakening, through a grad-
ual purgation and maturation, to its final integration with God. When Jesus is
mentioned, he is envisioned as a descendent power who brought down the rit-
uals from the transcendent sphere and instructed us about their proper use.
He is also viewed as a transcendent power who defeats the archons and estab-
lishes a pathway to return the spirit to the transcendent God. Because his name
has powerful agency, many Gnostic communities chanted permutations of the
personal name Jesus or some secret appellation of his (like IAO) in liturgical
contexts as they engaged mysticism as ritual therapy.
7 Mysticism as Extreme Death
Mysticism engages martyrdom in early Christianity by deploying the ordeal of

voluntary suffering and imminent extreme death as a traumatic technology
associated with divine visions, ecstasy, and transformation. This is a pathway
of mysticism already highly developed within Jewish circles, with roots as early
as the book of Daniel and the reports of the Maccabees that martyrs would be
immediately resurrected as a reward for their suffering.110 Jesus’ own death was
captured by the Christians within this framework, so that his resurrection was
first understand as the immediate reward for his unjust suffering.111 This bent
the martyrdom frame along Christocentric lines and opened it up as a way for
Christians to cope with the anti-Christian sentiments of Roman rulers. While
the bodies of Christian martyrs are mauled, gored, eaten, sliced, pierced, flayed,
109 Clement of Alexandria, Extracts of Theodotus 64. François Sagnard, ed., Clément d’ Alexan-
dre. Extraits de Théodote, SC 23 (Paris: Cerf, 1948), 186.
110 Alan F. Segal, “Heavenly Ascent in Hellenistic Judaism, Early Christianity and their Envi-
ronment,” in Wolfgang Haase, ed., Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt: Principat
II. Volume 23 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 1333–1394 at 1368–1370.
111 April D. DeConick, “How We Talk About Christology Matters,” in David Capes, April
D. DeConick, Helen K. Bond, and Troy A. Miller, eds., Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children:
Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity. Essays in Honor of Larry
Hurtado and Alan F. Segal (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007), 1–23 at 5–7. Cf. Segal,
“Heavenly Ascent,” 1370–1371.
and burnt in Christ’s stead, their souls are freed to journey to heaven and ren-
dezvous with angels, resurrected martyrs, Jesus and God.
Flavian, terrified that he might have to endure such an extreme death one
day, asked Bishop Cyprian about how much suffering he could expect to expe-
rience before he finally died. Cyprian replied that the martyr feels nothing
because he is in ecstasy: “It is another flesh that suffers when the soul is in
heaven. The body does not feel this at all when the mind is entirely absorbed
in God.”112 While the martyrs were marched to their deaths and God’s king-
dom, some Christians believed that the martyrs’ minds and hearts were already
there.113
In the Martyrdom of Polycarp, the martyrs are recognized as the “noblest of
Christ’s witnesses” who are “not present in the flesh.” Instead, they are in con-
stant conversation with the Lord. The eyes of their souls are only focused on the
promises of God, “which neither the ear has heard nor the eye seen, nor has it
entered into the human heart.” It is to the martyrs that the Lord has revealed his
long-kept secrets, since these Christians were no longer humans, but angels.114
In fact, Agapius is said to have “perfected the mysteries of his faith by martyr-
dom.”115
Like Stephen, the first martyr according to tradition, they were blessed
with visions of Christ.116 Because their souls are “uplifted (sublimis)” by their
extreme ordeals, it was believed that martyrs were permitted hear and see
Christ before they died.117 As they hastened toward their crowns with eager-
ness and courage, they were rewarded with visions of the Lord.118 Their visions
were not normal night dreams, but “revelations” granted to them by the grace
of the Lord.119
Perpetua has visions of climbing up a ladder to heaven, where she, as one
of Christ’s new children, is given milk to drink by the Lord. But this is not
112 Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 21.4. Henry Mursurillo, ed., The Acts of the Christian
Martyrs: Introduction, Texts and Translations (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 234–235.
113 Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 22.1–2. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs,
236–237.
114 Martyrdom of Polycarp 2. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 2–5.
115 Martyrdom of Marian and James 11. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 208–
211.
116 Acts 7:54–60. Cf. Phillip B. Munoa, “Jesus, the Merkavah, and Martyrdom in Early Christian
Tradition,” JBL 121 (2002): 303–325.
117 Martyrdom of Marian and James 7.6. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 204–
205.
118 Martyrdom of Maximilian 3.2. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 248–249.
119 Martyrdom of Marian and James 7. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 202–205.
38 deconick
Jacob’s innocuous ladder. This ladder is laden with metal implements to rip
through the skin of anyone who climbs it.120 Similarly Quartillosa sees Christ
in heaven as a young man with “remarkable stature.” He is feeding the new
martyrs (herself included) cups of milk.121 In another of Perpetua’s visions, she
sees herself morph into a man in an arena. She strips naked and is anointed
with oil. She fights her opponent, an Egyptian soldier, defeats him and walks
through the Gate of Life.122 James sees the Lord as an exceedingly gigantic and
brilliant figure, so bright that he could not but glance at him. The Lord gives
James and his fellow martyr Marian purple belts worn to gladiator games, and
says to them, “Follow me.” Just before Victor’s execution, he reports to have
seen Christ as a child with a brilliant countenance (beyond description!). He
is told that he must suffer a while longer, but not to despair because Christ
is with him. While his soul suffers, his spirit hastens to God.123 In all these
cases, the martyr’s revelation confirms that the route to heaven is extreme
death.
Martyrdom was recognized by the early Christians as an extreme death that
imitated Jesus’ death on a most fundamental and traumatic level. The acts of
the martyrs are filled with confessions of panic, terror and horror. One observer
in Lyons recognized two groups of arrested Christians. One group had been
trained for martyrdom, so they gave full confessions of their faith “with great
enthusiasm.” The other group, however, was identified as “untrained, unpre-
pared, and weak, unable to bear the strain of a great conflict.”124 The early Chris-
tians recognized that the ability to endure extreme suffering without break-
ing was not for everyone. It was a “calling (κλῆσις)” for extreme devotees that
required the training of an athlete to be able to withstand the strain of tor-
ture.125 This may explain the constant references to martyrdom as a contest for
the ultimate crown or as a battle for Christ to win his glory.
What did this training look like? While the Christians do not appear to have
offered classes in Martyrdom 101, the literature characterizes martyrs as peo-
ple who have spent their Christian life in intense devotion to God, so that the
120 Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 4.1–10. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs,
110–113.
121 Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 8. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 220–
221.
122 Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 10. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 116–
119.
123 Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 7.1–4. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs,
218–219.
124 Martyrs of Lyons 1.11. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 64–65.
125 Letter of Phileas 2. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 320–321.
Spirit has been continually nurtured within them.126 There are constant com-
ments in the literature to fervent and perpetual prayer, so that while the martyrs
were still living on earth, “their souls lived in heaven.”127 Old men who were
exhausted with age and illness triumphed before the tribunals because they
were strengthened and given power by the Lord in their souls and bodies.128
The martyrs are said to have “won” their Glory with their eagerness and their
courage to emulate Christ. Because they volunteered to die like Christ (and
went through with it), like him they were believed to be already in the form
of God, equal to God.129
This meant that their bodies were extreme bodies. They could be tortured
and broken beyond normal human limits and still endure. Blandina’s torturers
were surprised that, after all they had done to her body, she still breathed.130
Some, like Sanctus were so disfigured that they were beyond human recogni-
tion. It is said that Sanctus had achieved Christ’s Glory in suffering like Christ,
so that on the second day of his trials, his body was reshaped, straightened and
unbent. He was not being tortured, but “cured” through the destruction of his
body and its subsequent transfiguration.131
This transfigured or glorified body is commented on frequently in the liter-
ature. It is the body beyond the human, now the body of a “man of heaven and
of God.”132 When Perpetua finally goes to the arena to meet her death, she has
a “shining countenance and calm step.”133 It is revealed to Montanus that cen-
turions will come and conduct him to a huge field where he will be joined by
heroes like Cyprian and Leucius who have already died as martyrs. Montanus
sees his own garments begin to glow and his body becoming even more bril-
liant than his clothing. He remarks, “Indeed [my] flesh became so luminous
that the secrets of [my] heart could be seen.”134 Likewise, Flavian has a vision
126 Regarding the devotion of Vettius Epagathus: Martyrs of Lyons 1.9–10. Mursurillo, The Acts
of the Christian Martyrs, 62–65.
127 Martyrdom of Agape, Irene, and Chione at Saloniki 1.3. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian
Martyrs, 280–281.
132 Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 17.2. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 230–
231.
133 Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 18.2. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 126–
127.
134 Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 11. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 222–
225.
40 deconick
of a fellow martyr Successus whose face and garments glow. His form is difficult
to recognize at first because he dazzled Flavian’s eyes with “angelic brilliance
(angelico splendore).”135
How does it all end for the martyr? Saturnus is given a vision of his death
and his sister’s death as martyrs. In his vision, he and Perpetua are carried to
the east by four angels where they see an intense light and enter a garden. They
are taken to meet and greet the Lord, and to participate in the heavenly choir’s
rendition of “Holy, holy, holy!” They kiss the enthroned Lord and he touches
their faces with his hand. Perpetua sighs with ecstasy, happy to be one of God’s
darlings.136
8 Mysticism as Oracle
There is abundant evidence in the early Jewish and Christian literature that
mysticism was undertaken to discern God’s secrets. This has been particularly
discussed by scholars as a thematic of apocalyptic literature, where we find
confirmations of future punishments to equalize justice, assurances of resur-
rected bodies to reward faithfulness, and guarantees of God’s management
to deter chaos.137 The same oracular function of mysticism emerges in the
Hekhalot literature too.138
Since this is the pathway most discussed in academic literature, I will only
comment briefly on a single early Christian example, the Book of Revelation,
where John of Patmos on Sunday, “the Lord’s Day” was “in the Spirit (ἐν πνεύ-
ματι)” when he began to receive revelations and visions from Christ.139 This
135 Martyrdom of Montanus and Lucius 21.8. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 234–
235.
136 Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 12. This kind of erotic language is not uncommon,
especially for women martyrs who are often characterized as Christ’s beloved, bride and
wife. Cf. Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas 18.2. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Mar-
tyrs, 126–127; Martyrdom of Marian and James 11.7. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian
Martyrs, 208–209; Martyrs of Lyons 1.48; 1.56. Mursurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs,
76–77; 78–81.
137 Classic studies include: David S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1964); idem, Divine Disclosure: An Introduction to Jewish
Apocalyptic (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992); Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven
(London: SPCK, 1982); Paul D. Hanson, Visionaries and Their Apocalypses (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1983).
138 James R. Davila, Descenders to the Chariot: The People Behind the Hekhalot Literature,
JSJSS 70 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 293–294.
139 Revelation 1:10.
language suggests some kind of technology of ecstasy employed by John during

Christian worship, but its exact nature is not related. Since there are frequent
prayers recorded by John in his book, it may be that John used a prayer tech-
nology to prompt his visions. Indeed he records a series of three short prayers
to Jesus Christ (replete with “amen”) prior to his first vision.140
What were John’s revelations and visions about? They addressed a variety
of practical concerns that the Christians had about their relationship to other
Christians, Jews and pagans. Endurance in the face of martyrdom, however,
is the highest priority. Jesus is identified as the faithful martyr, the first to be
resurrected from the dead, whose blood sacrifice freed Christians from their
sins and made them part of his kingdom.141 John’s visions reveal how essential
it is for Christians, like Jesus, to endure imprisonment and torture, remaining
faithful to Christ even to death.142 The Christian who stays true to the confes-
sion of Christ and conquers, will be crowned, enthroned and saved for a new
life in the new Jerusalem that will descend from heaven in the not too distant
future.143 In a moment of ecstatic ascent, when John again was “in the Spirit
(ἐν πνεύματι),” he sees a door in heaven open and, on the other side, the Lord
enthroned with four angelic creatures and twenty-four Christian elders prais-
ing him.144 One hundred and forty-four thousand blameless martyrs who have
followed the Lamb to slaughter are standing near his throne. They bear Jesus’
name, their confession, on their foreheads.145
John further learns about the coming wrath of God. He is reassured in his
visions that God has a remedy for what appears to be an unjust and chaotic
world. It is confirmed for John that the judgment and eschaton are still in the
works and that the Lord has everything under control. This is for John a funda-
mental truth that must be communicated. The biggest eschatological confirma-
tion, however, is Christocentric. Christ assures him, “Surely I am coming soon
(Ναί, ἔρχομαι ταχύ)!” To which John replies, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus (Ἀμήν,
ἔρχου κύριε Ἰησοῦ)!”146
140 Revelation 1:4–7.

141 Rev 1:5–6.
142 Rev 2:2–3,10–11; 3:11; etc.
143 Rev 3:11–12, 21.
144 Rev 4:1.
145 Rev 14:3–5.
146 Rev 22:20.
42 deconick
9 Mysticism as Worship
One of the most typical pathways of mysticism is worship. While examples

abound in Christian literature, the Ascension of Isaiah provides a helpful
description that links the experience of ascent and heavenly worship with
communities of trained early Christian prophets. The communities consist of
devotees who have withdrawn from Bethlehem into a mountainous region in
order to be as isolated as possible from the governing authorities and their
sins.147 Their lifestyle is austere (even severe), clothed in sackcloth in imitation
of the ancestral prophets and subsisting on a diet of cooked wild herbs gathered
from the mountainside.148 Their retreat to the mountainous regions as ascetics
appears to have been an act of resistance against the local rulers whose reign
was felt to be the cause of great apostasy and iniquity. In fact, they believed
that the governing authorities were agents of Beliar and servants of Satan.149
Whenever these prophets made forays down the mountain into local Pales-
tinian communities, they anticipated possible abuse, imprisonment, and death
at the hands of the local authorities.150 Additional conflict arose among the
Christians themselves who contested leadership between the elders who gov-
erned their local communities and the prophets who occasionally descended
from the mountains with tales of their ocular visions.151
It appears that prophets from different districts would descend from their
mountaintop neighborhoods to hold an occasional summit with the local
Christian communities for the purposes of guided contemplation and wor-
ship.152 As the congregation kneeled, a prophetic leader invoked the opening of
the door of heaven. Once the door was opened, the community heard the voice
of the Holy Spirit. Through the open door, they worshiped and praised God on
their knees.153 The leader then spoke directly with the Holy Spirit, a conversa-
tion that was overheard by the community. At some point, however, the leader
fell silent, ascending out of his body through the open door into the seven heav-
enly realms. After experiencing worship in the heavenly temple and its trans-
formative effects, he returns to recount his visions to his fellow prophets.154
147 Ascen. Isa. 2.7–10.

148 Ascen. Isa. 2:10–11.
149 Ascen. Isa. 2.2–5.
150 Ascen. Isa. 2.12–16.
151 Ascen. Isa. 3.21–31.
152 Ascen. Isa. 6.3–10.
153 Ascen. Isa. 6.5–6.
154 Ascen. Isa. 6.10–10.6.
His vision confirms the perpetual worship of God within the heavenly realms
by all the angels, so that their worship through the open door joins human and
angel in the act of utter devotion.
10 Mysticism as Empowerment
This pathway of mysticism involves technologies that prompt immediate con-

tact with God in order to transfigure and empower the person to control sick-
ness, human affairs and even cosmic events. Mysticism as empowerment is
about using established rituals to collapse the chasm between the human and
God, to ascend into the celestial spheres or bring angels down, to learn the
divine mysteries, to be transfigured and vested with power. In their oldest
form, they must reflect the dispersal of shamanic practices in urban centers
across the Mediterranean.155 Merkavah mystics, according to Hekhalot Rabbati,
acquire a list of supernatural powers in order to act as authorities and arbitra-
tors for the people, even representing the people before God in the celestial
temple and serving as heavenly priests.156 According to this list, the mystic
gained the power to bind angels to himself, compel angels to take him to the
throne of Glory to stand next to God, to learn about future, to discern human
activities (even those done in secret), to bring plague and disease upon his
opponents (and sores dripping with pus), to be feared by angels and humans,
and to judge the moral fitness of others. Peter Schäfer goes so far as to suggest
that the merkavah mystic is God’s chosen, ascribed with qualities of a mes-
siah.157
While this mode of mysticism is very well attested by the Hekhalot literature,
by comparison in the early Christian context it is less typical.158 The one promi-
nent case is Paul who in 2Corinthians 12 claims to have gained the power of
Christ by ascending into the heavens. He wields this power now as a true apos-
tle capable of performing “signs and wonders and mighty works.” We might be
able to conclude from Paul’s rhetoric that his opponents, the super-apostles
155 Cf. Davila, Descenders to the Chariot.

156 Hekhalot Rabbati 1.2–2.3; 9.2–3 and 16.5. Cf. Morray-Jones, “Transformational Mysticism in
the Apocalyptic-Merkabah Tradition,” 20–21.
157 Peter Schäfer, Hekhalot-Studien, TSAJ 19 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988), 292–293.
158 Cf. Rebecca Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power: Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in
Early Jewish Mysticism (Harrisburg: Trinity International Press, 1998); Davila, Descenders
to the Chariot; Naomi Janowitz, Icons of Power: Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity (University
Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002).
44 deconick
from Jerusalem, also linked their ability to perform miracles to the power of
Christ they acquired when they made their own ascents into heaven.159
While there are plenty of examples of Christians wielding power as magi-
cians invoking Jesus’ name, they usually do not do so as mystics who have
ventured into the otherworld to meet the angels and God, to be transformed
and empowered, to bend the divinities to their will or to bring back remedies.160
Yet a few extant magical papyri contain spells that adjure the seven archangels,
the twenty-four elders, or the four cherubim to come down out of heaven and
do the magician’s bidding.161 In one such spell, the Christian magician asks for
Michael to come and add his power to the magician’s. Michael descends and
tells him, “What are you asking for? I shall do it for you. If you ask for the stone,
I shall break it. If for iron, I shall turn it into water.”162 Michael is praised in
another spell where the magician is supposed to draw his power down with
these words: “You powers on high, come. Dance to the Holy Spirit with me
today. Let the sun and the moon and all the stars stand with me today … Let
the gates of heaven open and the angels of light come to me, so that I may
complete the holy praise.” What is this praise good for? If it is chanted every
month for sixty months, healing will be granted.163
In another, the angels are called down directly to stand with the magician
and wield their powers.164 Given the names of the divinities invoked, this is
likely a Christian gnostic spell. The most interesting of these gnostic spells
is one found in the recently published Macquarie Papyri, Christian grimoire
reflecting Sethian vocabulary. The magician calls upon Jesus, “Come, be at
rest in my heart and do everything for which I invoke you in this mystery
(ⲁⲙⲟⲩ ⲕⲉⲙⲧⲟⲛ ⟨ⲙ⟩ⲟⲕ ϩⲣⲁⲓ ϩⲛⲡⲁϩⲏⲧ ⲛⲕⲓⲣⲉ ⲛϩⲱⲃ ⲛⲓⲙ ⲉⲓⲉⲡⲓⲕⲁⲗⲓ ⲙⲟⲕ ⲉⲧⲃⲏⲧⲟⲩ
ϩⲛ ⲡⲓⲙⲉⲥⲧⲉⲣⲉⲙⲁ).”165 The adjurations include healing spells, love charms and
binding invocations.
159 Morray-Jones, “Paradise Revisited (2Cor. 12:1–12): The Jewish Mystical Background of
Paul’s Apostolate, Part 2: Paul’s Heavenly Ascent and Its Significance,” 269–274; James
D. Tabor, Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise in its Greco-Roman, Judaic and Early
Christian Contexts (Lanham: University Press of America, 1986), 23.
160 For examples of Christian magic, see Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith, eds., Ancient Chris-
tian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994). Not
one spell in the collection attests that Christians were using mysticism as a means of
empowerment.
161 Cf. Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic, spells 36, 63, 66, 71, 116, 117, 135.
162 Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic, spell 116.
165 Macquarie Papyri 2.3–5. Malcolm Choat and Iain Gardner, eds., The Macquarie Papyri: A
Coptic Handbook of Ritual Power, volume 1 (Turnout: Brepols, 2013), 46–47.
These spells confirm what Plotinus tells us about the gnostics who attended
his lectures. He knows them as prominent healers who worked from sacred
formulas they had written, uttering spells, appeasements, and evocations to
the transcendent or supernal powers in order to free themselves of diseases. To
wield the power of the transcendent divinities, they relied on performing par-
ticular melodies and sounds, including popping noises, directed breathings and
hissing.166 Why did these gnostics think they were able to brandish the powers
of the transcendent, something that Plotinus himself regarded as impossible?
The answer lies in the fact that the gnostics were perfected during initiation,
themselves transformed into transcendent divinities. Because of this diviniza-
tion, they believed themselves to be nobler than everything else, including even
the traditional gods and the heavens too. As Plotinus relates, they were kin to
the supernal powers, children of the true God.167 It was on this basis that they
wielded their power to heal.
Similar therapeutic practices were fostered in the Valentinian church of Mar-
cus. Marcus’ church was different from other Valentinian churches in that his
was a church for pneumatics only.168 To join his church meant to be initiated
directly into the transcendent realms and united with one’s angelic twin during
a theatrical (and likely psychedelic) revamped eucharist ceremony. His con-
gregants, transformed into supernal beings, recited therapeutic chants to the
great Mother, and thought that the pronouncement of a-m-e-n harnessed the
entire power of the divine world to bring about psychological and physical heal-
ing. They also vocalized sets of mute letters, semi-vowels, and vowels, which
they believed corresponded to different deities in the supernal realm. These
pronouncements, along with the name j-e-s-o-u-s, were the powerful sounds
of creation, and could be harnessed by the perfected gnostic to heal. Marcus
guided his congregation in the ritual intonation of the long vowel ôôô in order
to relieve personal distress. He believed ô is a universal letter of healing since
babies cry out this vowel whenever they are suffering or in need. According to
Marcus, when the distressed soul calls out this vowel in prayer, the soul’s angelic
twin hears it and sends down relief from the transcendent world above.169
Likely the most well-known example from antiquity of mysticism as empow-
erment is the Mithras Liturgy.170 This Greek magical papyrus is not Christian
166 Plotinus, Ennead 2.9.14.

167 Plotinus, Ennead 2.9.9.
168 DeConick, The Ancient New Age.
169 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.13–20, especially 1.14.7–8.
170 Betz (Hans Dieter Betz, The “Mithras Liturgy,” STAC 18 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003])
argues persuasively for a Hermetic connection.
46 deconick
but may be representative of the early Hermetic tradition. It attests to the

recitation of peculiar prayers and letter strings, the issuing of popping sounds,
the use of breathing techniques, and the handling and kissing of amulets to
enable the soul to ascend safely through the celestial realms. The magician is
transfigured into a star deity and comes directly into contact with Helios and
the Bear (the Pole God), although he never seems to reach the transcendent
deity beyond the sun and the stars. These techniques of mysticism are used
to bring about the magician’s immortalization, a condition that yields extreme
power and vast knowledge. The magician notes that there is “no greater pro-
cedure” in all the world than immortalization. Once immortalized, simply “ask
the God what you want, and he will give it to you (τούτου μείζον’ οὐχ εὗρον ἐν τῷ
κόσμῳ πραγματείαν. Αἰτοῦ δέ, ἃ βούλει, τὸν θεόνμ καὶ δώσει σοι).”171
This interest in the immortalizing or deifying aspect of magic surfaces in
second-century Platonism when the word theurgia, or divine (theion) activ-
ity (ergon), comes into play to describe the deifying effect of Chaldean rituals.
In these rituals, the magician, while in ecstasy, is possessed by the God and is
transformed into a living image of that God.172 The Chaldean Oracles is a collec-
tion that preserves remnants of these rituals which, by “joining action to sacred
speech,” prompt the ascent of the soul through the seven planetary spheres,
enabling it to “embrace” or “squeeze” (agchô) God into itself in an experience
of divine inebriation.173 The book is associated with the Julians who lived dur-
ing the reign of Marcus Aurelius. They were a father-son team, ecstatics who
used ancient rituals to channel Plato’s soul, heal and make rain.174
The most well-known theurgist in antiquity was Iamblichus, the fourth-
century Neo-Platonist. Iamblichus believed that the soul’s transformation, the
recovery of its divinity, was not some intellectual exercise. Rather it involved a
practice, a technology of rites that Pythagoras and Plato received from people
even more ancient than themselves. It was the heirs of Plato who misunder-
stood and turned the technology, the art of divine experience and embrace,
into an intellectual discourse and discursive habit that could not penetrate or
transform the soul.175 The wielding of theurgical rites of sacrifice, incantations,
171 Mithras Liturgy 777–778. Betz, The “Mithras Liturgy,” 58.

172 Gregory Shaw, “Theurgy: Rituals of Unification in the Neoplatonism of Iamblichus,” Tra-
ditio 41 (1985): 1–28.
173 Chaldean Oracles 110. Ruth Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles: Text, Translation and Commen-
tary, Studies in Greek and Roman Religion 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 90–91 = Chaldean Oracles
97. Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles, 86–87.
174 Janowitz, Icons of Power, 6–9.
175 Gregory Shaw, “The Talisman: Magic and True Philosophers,” in Angela Voss and Jean Hin-
son Lall, eds., The Imaginal Cosmos: Astrology, Divination, and the Sacred (Newcastle upon
Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007), 26–37.
chants, hymns and prayers, Iamblicus claims, is practice of true philosophy,

resulting in the human being taking the shape of the Gods. Theurgy, then, is
demiurgy.176 Yet it does not compel the gods, but moves us toward them.177
The Christian response to Neo-Platonic theurgy was twofold. Augustine of
Hippo characterized it as the invention of lying demons and the very soul of
paganism, of no value whatsoever to Christians.178 The fifth-century Christian,
Dionysus the Areopagite, however, recognized in theurgy the operation of the
Christian sacraments. He called the sacraments “theurgic mysteries” (ta theo-
rga mystêria) with Christ as their “cause” (archê) and “essence” (ousia).179 For
him, the eucharist is theurgy par excellence, because it relied on the power
of Christ to transform fallen humans into God. And so with Dionysus we
return to where we started, with mysticism as sacrament, the mystery of Jesus
Christ.
11 Trauma as Ecstatic Technology
While the pathways of mysticism emergent among the early Christians are
quite divergent (from sacrament to schooling to daily regimen to personal ther-
apy to extreme death to oracle to worship to empowerment), there are deep
reoccurring elements within the modes that require comment, particularly the
association of trauma, ecstasy and the (re)formation of the self.
In fact, my observations of the early Christian materials has led me to think
that the mystical experience and its transformative capacity to alter the self
may hinge on the traumatic. On the one hand, each mode is trodden by people
who are facing traumatic life events like conversion, illness, colonization, and
martyrdom. The trauma here is unsolicited or spontaneous. It is involuntary.
On the other hand, the kinds of rituals and extreme body technologies used to
catalyze transcendence in each of these modes can be viewed as ways to inten-
tionally traumatize the individual, to dissociate the person from normal society
and from a normal sense of self. The trauma here is self-induced and voluntary.
It is imposed and regulated by the person undergoing the ritual or the people
administering the ritual.
176 Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (University Park: The
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 45–57.
177 Iamblichus, On the Mysteries 5.11 (215.3–7).
178 Augustine, City of God 10.10.
179 Pseudo-Dionysus, Epistle 9.1 (PG 3.1108A); Eccl. Hier. 1.1 (PG 3.372A). Cf. Shaw, “Theurgy,” 3.
48 deconick
In its sacramental mode, we have conversion to the Christian faith and all
the trauma that this apostasy entails personally and socially as the initiate is
reborn into a new family and forfeits the old life. Both as a schooled discipline
and as a daily regimen, the initiate is trained to be an ideal Christian, taking on
the peculiar moral and ethical standards of the new religion. To live as a perpet-
ual contemplative (in the case of Clement’s paideia) or as a celibate angel (in
the case of early forms of encratism, asceticism, and monasticism) is to break
with normal pathways of living, and take on extreme bodies and extreme lives.
Mysticism that empowers, divines, and heals hinges on traumatic experiences
of illness, dissonance, and hopelessness. Its strength is its attempt to cure dis-
ease and anxiety, alleviate disaffection and disillusionment, and ease isolation
and ignorance. The trauma of arrest, imprisonment, trial, torture and imminent
death of the martyrs goes without saying.
I am not the first to notice a connection between trauma and mysticism. In
fact, this has been a reoccurring theme in the scholarship of Jeffrey J. Kripal who
says that he first noticed it when he read Georges Bataille’s Eroticism: Death and
Sensuality in 1987. Building on the insights he gained from Bataille’s work, Kri-
pal went on to develop the concept of the traumatic secret.180 He defines this
as the observation that, very often, “the mystical event or altered state of con-
sciousness appears to have been ‘let in’ through the temporary suppression or
dissolution of the socialized ego, which was opened up or fractured … through
extreme physical, emotional, and/or sexual suffering, that is, through what we
would today call in our new psychological code ‘trauma.’”181 Kripal understands
the trauma to be a psychological correlate, even a catalyst, for mystical states of
consciousness, although he does not think that the traumatic fracture produces
them. Rather the trauma “allows” the mystical state to break through an other-
wise stable ego.182 He notes that this dynamic is largely unexplored by scholars
because it is “counterintuitive and morally difficult” to imagine that positive
religious experiences can be catalyzed by events that are morally reprehensi-
ble or physically horrific. And yet, just as Bataille argued before him, Kripal is
convinced that transcendence and trauma are “very much coordinated.”183
What is it about the traumatic that might catalyze or prompt altered states
of consciousness and alterations of the self, usually expressed in early Chris-
180 Jeffrey J. Kripal, “The Traumatic Secret: Bataille and the Comparative Erotics of Mystical
Literature,” in Jeremy Biles and Kent L. Brintnall, eds., Negative Ecstasies: Georges Bataille
and the Study of Religion (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 153–168 at 155–157.
181 Kripal, “The Traumatic Secret,” 155.
tian texts in transcendent terms as reformations of the self into a body of glory
simulating the glorious body of Jesus Christ, and a mind that has come to know
God’s secrets? To answer this question, I think it is necessary to bring into the
discussion recent studies in cognitive science and neurophysiology. It has been
documented by the modern medical and scientific community that people
who undergo trauma, especially repetitively, can experience dissociative states
of consciousness that result from the aggressive triggering of the autonomic
nervous system, the body’s fight-or-flight response to survive.184
The autonomic nervous system has two main modes of operation, the sym-
pathetic and parasympathetic modes. The sympathetic mode is responsible
for our body’s ability to become instantly alert. It produces our body’s fight-
or-flight reaction and the corresponding emotions, anxiety, fear and panic.
When this mode is triggered, it immediately increases heart rate and breath-
ing, pumps adrenaline into the bloodstream, and dilates our pupils, as it gets
the body ready for instant action. The parasympathetic mode is our body’s nat-
ural response to relax by decreasing heart rate and breathing, lulling us into
rest and sleep, and quieting us so that we can digest food and mate. When this
system is operationally dominant, we tend to be emotionally peaceful.185
Dissociative states of consciousness, triggered by the hyperstimulation of
the sympathetic nervous system, can be characterized by feelings of deperson-
alization or detachment from the immediate surroundings, even separation
from one’s own body and memories. There can be feelings of derealization,
when the person experiences the slipping away from normal reality. Feelings of
possession are also quite common, as well as sensations of self-fragmentation
and the emergence of a new self. These dissociative characteristics are not all
that different from the commonly occurring features of ecstatic states of con-
sciousness that characterize mysticism. They too often include an awareness
of disembodiment, a disconnection from the world, an altered sense of the self
and its boundaries, and the emergence of a new self.186 The difference appears
to be one of quality not type, that is, whether the experience of the altered state
184 Cf. Jonathan E. Sherin and Charles B. Nemeroff, “Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: The Neu-
rological Impact of Psychological Trauma,” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 13:3 (2011):
263–278; Stanley Krippner and Susan Marie Powers, eds., Broken Images, Broken Selves:
Dissociative Narratives in Clinical Practice (Washington, D.C.: Brunner/Mazel Publishers,
1997).
185 For a more detailed description, see Eugene D’Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg, The Mys-
tical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999),
23–27.
186 Cf. Shantz, Paul in Ecstasy, 71.
50 deconick
of consciousness is a negative or positive one, whether “life-depotentiating” or

“life-potentiating,” whether maladaptive or adaptive.187
This leads me to think that the basic biological platform that supports
ecstasy also supports dissociation disorders that can be maladaptive. There
have been some eye-opening studies on the biology of ecstasy that identify the
actual brain structures, which undergo increased activity during ecstasy. These
structures involve a neurophysiological circuit that engages the limbic system,
portions of the basal ganglia, the right temporal lobe, and the dorsomedial,
orbitofrontal, and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The parietal lobes usu-
ally undergo deactivation. This brain circuit is regulated mainly by dopamine
and serotonin neurotransmitter systems.188 Additional research shows that
the basic biology supporting ecstatic states, like dissociative states following
trauma, relies on overstimulation of the autonomic nervous system.189
Ecstasy, in fact, can be prompted by overstimulating either system. The
parasympathetic system can be made to go into overdrive, even to the point
of producing a total loss of bodily sensations, through intentional stillness
and silence or low-key repetitive behaviors like chanting or drumming. This
effects a hyperquiescent state and an extraordinary state of relaxation, bliss,
187 Stanley Krippner, “Dissociation in Many Times and Places,” in Stanley Krippner and Susan
Marie Powers, eds., Broken Images, Broken Selves: Dissociative Narratives in Clinical Practice
(Washington, D.C.: Brunner/Mazel Publishers, 1997), 3–40 at 33; Rhea A. White, “Disso-
ciation, Narrative, and Exceptional Human Experiences,” in Stanley Krippner and Susan
Marie Powers, eds., Broken Images, Broken Selves: Dissociative Narratives in Clinical Practice
(Washington, D.C.: Brunner/Mazel Publishers, 1997), 88–121 at 103–104.
188 Cf. Patrick McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. 2009), 80–130; Andrew B. Newberg, “Religious and Spiritual Practices: A
Neurochemical Perspective,” in Patrick McNamara, ed., Where God and Science Meet. Vol. 2.
The Neurology of Religious Experience (Westport: Praeger, 2006), 15–31.
189 E. Gellhorn and F. Kiely, “Mystical States of Consciousness: Neurophysiological and Clin-
ical Aspects,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 154 (1972): 399–405; Barbara Lex,
“The Neurobiology of Ritual Trance,” in Eugene G. D’Aquili, Charles D. Laughlin, and
John McManus, eds., The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1979), 117–151; Arnold Mandell, “Toward a Psychobiology of
Transcendence: God in the Brain,” in Julian M. Davidson and Richard J. Davidson, eds., The
Psychobiology of Consciousness (New York: Plenum, 1980), 379–464; Charles D. Laughlin,
John McManus, and Eugene G. D’Aquili, Brain, Symbol and Experience: Towards a Neu-
rophenomenology of Human Consciousness (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1992);
Andrew B. Newberg and Eugene G. D’Aquili, “The Neuropsychology of Religious and Spir-
itual Experience,” Journal of Conscious Studies 7 (2000): 251–266; Andrew B. Newberg,
Eugene G. D’Aquili, and Vince Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology
of Belief (New York: Ballantine Books, 2001). For a fascinating application of to shaman-
ism, see Michael Winkelman, Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness
and Healing (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010).
and oceanic tranquility. The sympathetic mode can be intentionally overstimu-

lated by engaging in deliberate trauma, rapid repeated behaviors, and extreme
activities. This results in a state of hyperarousal. While this hyperstimulation
has its own correlation to ecstatic states of boundless energy and flow, when
pushed to the extreme, the sympathetic mode can run on high until the body
becomes exhausted and collapses. At this point, the state of hyperarousal is
erupted by the quiescent system. The parasympathetic system kicks in and we
are back to feelings of oceanic tranquility, but now with an orgasmic, rapturous
rush.190
The consequences of the hyperstimulation of the autonomic nervous system
and the brain circuitry (including the amygdala, prefrontal, and right anterior
temporal networks) through trauma and/or religious ritual appear to involve a
decentering or destabilizing of the normal ego self and sensations of transfor-
mations into a new self. How a new better self (or a negative one in the case
of dissociation that is maladaptive) emerges from these experiences remains
an unresolved question, although the neuroscientist Patrick McNamara has
offered one possible model that might provide us with as a starting point.191
While this brief consideration of neurophysiological observations does not
even begin to provide us with all the answers we seek, it does allow us to snap
together a couple of pieces of the bigger puzzle. It demonstrates that mysti-
cal states of consciousness are supported by a particular biology and that this
biology can be triggered by hyperstimulating the autonomic nervous system
through ritual and trauma. The early Christians developed several pathways of
mysticism replete with ritual technologies that were linked to trauma in order
to experience the mystery of Jesus Christ, which was, for them, the reformat-
ting of their souls into images of God. For them, this was not just a metaphor
or a feat of the imagination. It was a biological reality.
190 Eugene D’Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Reli-
gious Experience (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 25–26.
191 McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience.
chapter 2
The Importance of the Parables of 1Enoch for

Understanding the Son of Man in the Four Gospels
Charles Gieschen
The interpretation of the phrase “the Son of Man” (ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου) found
frequently on the lips of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels has produced
a vast amount of secondary literature, much of it concluding that the throne
room scene in Dan 7:9–14 was not the primary influence on New Testament
usage.1 For example, Larry Hurtado’s conclusion about the evidence is repre-
sentative of many scholars.
… there is also no evidence for the idea that “the son of man” was a con-
fessional title in first-century Christian circles or that it represented some
specific Christological claim in itself. The expression occasionally may be
used to allude to Dan 7:13–14 (as may be the case in Mark 14:62). But in
these instances the expression functions as a literary device, not as an
established title, and the claim registered is that Jesus is the figure of that
passage.2
1 The phrase appears 81 times in the four New Testament Gospels (30 in Matthew, 14 in Mark,
25 in Luke, and 12 in John) and once in Acts (7:56); the referent of all of these is Jesus. The book
of Revelation uses the phrase “one like a son of man” twice for the risen Jesus (Rev 1:13; 14:14),
directly reflecting the language of Dan 7:13. Douglas R.A. Hare is representative of a signifi-
cant portion of 20th century NT scholarship when he considers the position that there was a
pre-Christian Jewish expectation of the coming of “the Son of Man” based upon Daniel 7 to
be without foundation; see his The Son of Man Tradition (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1990). For a
history of scholarship, see Delbert Burkett, The Son of Man Debate: A History and Evaluation,
SNTSMS 107 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
2 Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2003), 297 (emphasis original). Although Hurtado’s volume as a whole is highly
commendable, I strongly disagree with his conclusion that Daniel 7 had very little influence
on the usage of “the Son of Man” in the NT. For a more balanced overview of the evidence,
see George W.E. Nickelsburg, “Son of Man,” in David Noel Freedman, ed., Anchor Bible Dictio-
nary, 6 vols (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 6.137–150. See also Lester L. Grabbe, “ ‘Son of Man’: Its
Origin and Meaning in Second Temple Judaism,” in Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Gabriele Boc-
caccini, eds., Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels: Reminiscences, Allusions, Intertextuality, EJL 44
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2016), 169–198.

the parables of 1 enoch and the son of man 53
It is one thing to acknowledge the undisputed fact that “the Son of Man” was
not a confessional title used by Christians at the time of Jesus or afterwards but
quite another thing to claim that there is no evidence “that it represented some
specific Christological claim.”
Two serious problems have long plagued New Testament scholarship con-
cerning the Son of Man. The first problem is the tendency to divide the Son of
Man sayings into three distinct categories—earthly, suffering, and eschatolog-
ical judgment—and then conclude that only the eschatological sayings were
influenced by Daniel 7.3 It is better to understand that Daniel 7 had an influ-
ence on the use of the Son of Man in all of the occurrences found in the New
Testament, even if that influence was simply using the term Son of Man in order
to redefine understandings or expectations about the Son of Man. The second
problem among New Testament scholars is the widespread non-use of the evi-
dence in 1 En. 37–71 concerning how Daniel 7 was being interpreted by some
Jews prior the time of Jesus and the writing of the Gospels.4 This important
evidence, readily available to New Testament scholars for the past 100 years,
has either not been examined or has been ignored, in part because of ques-
tions concerning the precise date of these chapters and their preservation only
in Ethiopic. Recent scholarship has affirmed a late first-century BCE (during
the reign of Herod the Great) or early first-century CE date for these chap-
ters, which means these chapters are Jewish and pre-Christian, even though
Christians were largely responsible for the continued use and preservation of
1 Enoch until it began to be studied by scholars of ancient literature.5 Paolo Sac-
chi offers this succinct conclusion concerning recent scholarship on the dating
of the Parables: “The burden of proof has shifted to those who disagree with the
Herodian date.”6 Crispin Fletcher-Louis emphatically asserts that the consen-
3 For example, the Son of Man sayings in Matthew are grouped as follows: the earthly Son
of Man (8:20, 9:6, 11:7, 11:19, 12:8, 12:32, 13:37, 16:13); the suffering Son of Man (12:40, 17:9–12
[based on 16:21], 17:22–23, 20:18–19, 26:2, 26:24, 26:45), and the end-time judgment Son of Man
(10:23, 13:41–43, 16:27–28, 19:28, 24:27, 24:30–31, 24:37–39, 24:44, 25:31–32, 26:64). See Jack Dean
Kingsbury, Matthew, Proclamation Commentaries (2 ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986),
33–65.
4 The Parables of 1Enoch, sometimes called the Similitudes, are chapters 37–71.
5 For this current scholarly consensus on the dating of these chapters, see the essays in Gabriele
Boccaccini, ed., Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 415–496. See also George W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. Van-
derKam, 1Enoch 2: A Commentary on the Book of 1Enoch Chapters 37–82, Hermeneia (Min-
neapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2012), 62–63.
6 Paolo Saachi, “The 2005 Camaldoli Seminar on the Parables of Enoch: Summary and Pros-
pects for Future Research,” in Gabriele Boccaccini, ed., Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man:
Revisiting the Book of Parables (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 511.
54 gieschen
sus on the pre-Christian date of the Parables “… means no historical discussion

of Christological origins can now afford to ignore it.”7
Some scholars, however, have not followed the strong tendency to disavow or
downplay Danielic influence on the phrase found in the Gospels and to ignore
the Enochic Son of Man in efforts to understand Jesus as the Son of Man. Three
examples will suffice here. First, Daniel Boyarin, a scholar of Second Temple
and Rabbinic Judaism, contends “… that every time ‘The Son of Man’ appears
in post-Danielic Jewish literature (including the Gospels), it is always a direct
or indirect allusion to the usage of Daniel 7.”8 Boyarin postulates that there
was a transformation between the simile “one like a son of man” used for a
divine figure in Daniel 7 and the use of the phrase “the Son of Man” as a title
for a divine-human figure: “This figure of ‘One Like a Son of Man’ must have
been transformed nominally in the intervening centuries into (the same) figure
referred to as ‘The Son of Man.’”9 For Boyarin, the usage in the New Testament
only makes sense if “the Son of Man” is a known figure in the Jewish world at
the time. For him, the key piece of pre-Christian evidence for such a transfor-
mation is the Parables of 1Enoch but also notes other texts (e.g., 4 Ezra 13). He
thinks that while it is “… highly doubtful that the text of The Parables of Enoch
had any effect on the four Gospels, we can observe in it the hermeneutical and
theological historical processes that must have taken placed … in order for The
Son of Man to become the Christological title that it is in the Gospels.”10 He
does not, therefore, postulate any direct influence of 1 Enoch on the Gospels,
but “rather it shows us how other Jews—not the followers of Jesus—had read
and reread Daniel 7, suggesting the plausibility of the group that formed around
Jesus having also read Daniel 7 in a similar way, albeit identifying it with Jesus
and not Enoch.”11
Crispin Fletcher-Louis is among the scholars who has understood a direct
relationship between Daniel 7 and the Son of Man traditions in the Gospels
and sees them as very central to understanding Christian origins.12 He also
strongly advocates that the Parables of 1Enoch is crucial evidence for under-
standing how some Jews were interpreting Daniel 7, even stating that the New
7 Crispin Fletcher-Louis, Jesus Monotheism, Volume 1. Christological Origins: The Emerging

Consensus and Beyond (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 177.
8 Daniel Boyarin, “How Enoch Can Teach Us About Jesus,” EC 2 (2011): 52–53.
9 Boyarin, “How Enoch Can Teach Us About Jesus,” 52.
10 Boyarin, “How Enoch Can Teach Us about Jesus,” 61.
11 Boyarin, “How Enoch Can Teach Us about Jesus,” 53 (emphasis original).
12 Although Fletcher-Louis has been writing on related matters for almost two decades, he
has taken up the challenge of writing a projected four volume work on Christian origins
entitled Jesus Monotheism, of which only the first volume is published.
Testament contains “evidence to suggest that the Similitudes provides a golden

key to unlock the puzzle that is the origins of Christ devotion.”13 In contrast to
Hurtado, he argues that 1 En. 37–71 provides concrete evidence of Jewish expec-
tations concerning a pre-existent Son of Man, his role as eschatological judge
who is seated on God’s throne as ruler of all, the readiness of Jews to worship
this figure, and that “… he is included in, or that he clearly manifests, the divine
identity.”14 He argues that,
… whilst it is true that the worship of the Enochic Son of Man is a future,
not a present reality, that is nevertheless of inestimable significance for
the understanding of both the origins and the shape of “Christological
monotheism.” On the matter of origins, it offers an obvious and straight-
forward explanation of Christ devotion: the earliest Jewish believers wor-
shipped Jesus because they believed he truly was, as he had claimed to be,
the (preexistent) Son of Man they had been waiting for.15
A third recent scholar swimming against the current is Benjamin Reynolds.16 As

part of his study’s focus on the Son of Man in the Gospel of John, he also exam-
ined the widespread influence of Daniel 7 on Second Temple Jewish literature,
the Synoptic Gospels, Acts, and Revelation. In his discussion of the Parables of
1 Enoch, he confirms that these chapters are important pre-Christian evidence
for how Daniel 7 was being interpreted by some Jews.17 He concludes that some
characteristics present in Daniel are carried over into 1 Enoch (Son of Man is
similar to God in description and action; he is recognized by kings of the earth),
some characteristics only implicit in Daniel become explicit in 1 Enoch (Son of
Man is a heavenly figure; he is a messiah; he is the eschatological judge), and
other characteristics not found in Daniel are present in 1 Enoch (the righteous
dwell with the Son of Man; he will save the righteous; he is the Servant of the
Lord; he is preexistent; he is identified as the human Enoch).18 He understands
the writer of the Parables taking “some interpretive license” with the basic por-
trait presented in Daniel 7.19
13 Fletcher-Louis, Jesus Monotheism, 1.180.

14 Fletcher-Louis, Jesus Monotheism, 1.179.
15 Fletcher-Louis, Jesus Monotheism, 1.180 (emphasis original).
16 Benjamin E. Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man in the Gospel of John, WUNT 2.249 (Tüb-
ingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008).
17 Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man, 41–49.
18 Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man, 49.
19 Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man, 49.
56 gieschen
Building on the insights of these and others, this study will review selected
evidence from the Parables of 1Enoch in order to demonstrate that its depiction
of the Son of Man is a significant development in the interpretation of Daniel
7 as well as an important precursor to the presentation of Jesus as the Son of
Man in the Gospels in these seven characteristics:20
1. “The Son of Man” has become a title.
2. The Son of Man will be the eschatological judge.
3. The Son of Man will be seated on God’s Throne.
4. The Son of Man is preexistent prior to creation.
5. The Son of Man shares the divine name of the Lord of the Spirits.
6. The Son of Man is worshipped.
7. The Son of Man is also identified as a human (Enoch).
Although the importance of these characteristics for the presentations of the
Son of Man in the four Gospels will be self-evident, the conclusion of this study
will offer some observations about how Jewish expectations about Son of Man
are further redefined in the Gospels.
1 The Son of Man in 1 En. 37–71
1.1 The Son of Man as a Title

Although God appears elsewhere within the Hebrew Bible in a man-like form
standing or enthroned in the heavenly realm (e.g., Gen 28:12–17; Isa 6:1–5; and
Ezek 1:26), it is only in Daniel 7:13 where that man-like form is described as “one
like a son of man.” Although the Aramaic phrase ‫ ְכַּבר ֱא ׇנשׁ‬is not a title, it clearly
developed from Daniel 7:13 and not from elsewhere (e.g., Ps 8:4; 80:17) into one
of the four titles used for the messianic figure in the Parables.21 Although ren-
dered in a different ways in the Ethiopic text, “Son of Man” appears 15 times in
the Parables (1 En. 46:2, 3, 4; 48:2; 60:10; 62:5, 7, 9, 14; 63:11; 69:26, 27, 29 [twice],
20 For a discussion of these characteristics about which there is some debate, see Nickels-
burg and VanderKam, 1Enoch 2, 44–45, 113–123; see the examination of the Parables by
Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man, 41–56. Elsewhere I discuss five important charac-
teristics of divinity in theophanies: Divine Position, Divine Appearance, Divine Functions,
Divine Name, and Divine Veneration. See Charles A. Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology:
Antecedents and Early Evidence, AGAJU 42 (Leiden: Brill, 1998) [reprinted in the Library of
Early Christology Series (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018)], 30–33. Characteristics
2–6 above reflect these criteria.
21 The title Son of Man is used here with an awareness that three other titles are used for
this composite figure in the Parables (Chosen One, Righteous One, and Anointed One);
see Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1Enoch 2, 113–120.
70:1; 71:14, 17). “The Chosen One” or “the Elect One” is from Isa 42:1 and appears
17 times (1 En. 39:6; 40:5; 45:3, 4; 49:2, 4; 51:5a, 3; 52:6, 9; 53:6; 55:4; 61:5, 8, 10; 62:1).
The other two titles used for this figure both occur twice: “The Righteous One”
(1 En. 38:2; 53:6) is from Isaiah 53:11, and “His Messiah” or “His Anointed One”
(1 En. 48:10; 52:4) is a title originating with Psalm 2:2 and Isaiah 11:2–4. A very
important development has taken place whereby the phrase from Daniel has
been transformed into one of the primary titles for a messianic figure with royal
characteristics (enthroned and ruling). As is already clear, the Enochic Son of
Man is a composite figure with several influences beyond Daniel 7. In addition
to those already mentioned, other influences include Wisdom (Prov 8:22–31;
Sir 24:1–12; 1 En. 42:1–2; 49:1), Isaiah’s Servant (Isa 49:6; 1 En. 48:4), and the Glory
of YHWH (Ezek 1:26–28; 1 En. 46:1).
1.2 The Son of Man as Eschatological Judge

Eschatological judgment is mentioned in Daniel 7 (Dan 7:10, 22, 26), and “one
like a son of man” is given universal dominion or rule (Dan 7:14), but nowhere
in Daniel 7 is the “one like a son of man” identified as the judge. In 1 En. 37–
71, however, this is one of the primary functions of the Son of Man, introduced
very early: “When the congregation of the righteous appears, the sinners will
be judged for their sins, and from the face of the earthy they will be driven; and
when the Righteous One appears in the presence of the righteous … Where
(will be) the dwelling places of the sinners? … It would be better for them, if
they had not been born” (1 En. 38:1–2).22 The judgment of “all secrets things”
and evil by the Son of Man is a recurrent theme (1 En. 48:6; 63:11; 69:27). This
eschatological judgment will also bring salvation for some: “… the righteous
and chosen will be without number before him [the Chosen One/Son of Man]
forever and ever” (1 En. 39:6). The state of the righteous upon judgment will be
dwelling in the presence of the Lord of the Spirits and the Son of Man: “And
the Lord of the Spirits will dwell over them, and with that Son of Man they will
eat and lie down and rest and rise forever and ever” (1 En. 62:14). The assign-
ment of judgment to the Son of Man is an important development not present
in Daniel 7.
1.3 The Son of Man on God’s Throne

Although Daniel 7:9 speaks about “thrones being placed,” one for the Ancient
of Days and one for the “one like a son of man,” 1 En. mentions only “the throne
of glory” (cf. Ezekiel 1) upon which the Chosen One/Son of Man will sit: “On
22 All translations of 1Enoch are from Nickelsburg and VanderKam, 1 Enoch 2.

58 gieschen
that day, my Chosen One will sit on the throne of glory and he will ⟨test⟩ their
works, and their dwelling place(s) will be immeasurable. And their souls will
be ⟨distressed⟩ within them, when they see my chosen ones, and those who
appeal to my glorious name” (1 En. 45:3). Sitting on God’s throne is a very signif-
icant divine characteristic.23 It is also stated that the one divine throne of the
Lord of the Spirits is shared with the Chosen One/Son of Man: “And the Lord of
the Spirits seated the Chosen One upon the throne of glory; and he will judge
all the works of the holy ones in the heights of heaven, and in the balance he
will weigh their deeds” (1 En. 61:8). This is made more explicit when the Lord
of the Spirits is depicted sitting on the throne of glory (1 En. 62:2, 3) and then
“… pain will seize them when they see that Son of Man sitting on the throne of
his glory” (1 En. 62:5). In the scene of the eschatological revelation of the Son of
Man’s divine name in 1 En. 69, it is stated twice that the Son of Man “sat on the
throne of glory” (1 En. 69:27, 29). The Son of Man seated on the one throne of
God is another significant development not found in Daniel 7 where he appears
to have a throne separate from the Ancient of Days. This characteristic testifies
not only that he is a royal messiah, but he shares in the unique mystery of the
God of Israel because he shares his throne.
1.4 The Preexistence of the Son of Man

Daniel 7 implies the Ancient of Days is eternal by his very name, but there is no
explicit mention of the preexistence of the one like a son of man, even though
one could argue it is implicit from his divine status.24 The Parables of 1 Enoch,
however, makes the preexistence of the Son of Man explicit, as it depicts him
with the Lord of the Spirits during Enoch’s journey.
There I saw one who had a head of days, and his head was like white wool;
and with him was another, whose face was like the appearance of a man,
and his face was full of graciousness like one of the holy angels. And I
asked one of the angel peace, who went with me and showed me all the
hidden things, about that son of man—who he was, and whence he was
(and) why he went with the Head of Days. And he answered me and said
23 Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology, 31; Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel:
God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 150–181; and Darrell Hannah, “The Divine Throne and
Heavenly Mediators in Revelation and the Similitudes of Enoch,” ZNW 94 (2003): 68–96.
24 Much has been written about the “original meaning” of the vision in Daniel 7, but our focus
here is on how certain Jews who wrote and read 1Enoch were interpreting this vision in the
first-century CE. To examine what else may be implicit in this vision, see Markus Zehnder,
“Why the Danielic ‘Son of Man’ Is a Divine Being,” BBR 24 (2014): 331–347.
to me: “This is the son of man who has righteousness, and righteousness
dwells with him, and all the treasuries of what is hidden he will reveal; for
the Lord of Spirits has chosen him, and through uprightness his lot has
prevailed through truth in the presence of the Lord of the Spirits forever.”
1 En. 46:1–3
Although the characters are those of Daniel 7, the setting of eschatological tri-
umph in Daniel is not the scene here; that setting is the basis for the depiction of
the Son of Man in 1 En. 69:26–29. This scene is emphasizing the existence of the
hidden Son of Man as the Chosen One long before he will be revealed to all on
the final day (cf. 1 En. 48:2–3, 6; 62:7). Furthermore, the language here implies
that the author understood the “one like a son of man” in Daniel 7 to also be
the Glory of YHWH who was seen by Ezekiel: “whose face had the appearance
of a man” (1 En. 46:1; cf. Ezek 1:26–28). His preexistence “even before the cre-
ation of the sun and the constellations” is emphasized when speaking about
his naming, as will be seen below (1 En. 48:2–3). While some have argued that
the naming is testimony to the Son of Man’s election and not his preexistence,
the Parables emphasize preexistence prior to creation in two other places.25
1 En. 48:6 states, “For this (reason) he [the Son of Man] was chosen and hidden
in his presence, before the world was created and forever.” 1 En. 62:7 restates
similar content, “For from the beginning the Son of Man was hidden, and the
Most High preserved him in the presence of his might, and he revealed him to
the chosen.” Once again, 1 En. has developed the understanding of Daniel 7 in
the direction of understanding him within the mystery of the one God, since
only God existed prior to creation (Gen 1:1).
1.5 The Divine Name of the Son of Man

One of the most intriguing Jewish examples of a second heavenly figure sharing
the divine name is the Son of Man in the Parables of 1 Enoch (chapters 37–
71).26 Before discussing the name of the Son of Man, however, it is important
to observe that the Parables give significant attention to the other primary fig-
ure from the throne room scene in Daniel: the “one who was Ancient of Days”
25 For the arguments and defense of preexistence, see Reynolds, The Apocalyptic Son of Man,
44–45.
26 For a fuller discussion, see Charles A. Gieschen, “The Name of the Son of Man in the Para-
bles of Enoch,” in Gabriele Boccaccini, ed., Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting
the Book of Parables (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 238–249. For an understanding of
the divine name in the wider context of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity, see
Charles A. Gieschen, “The Divine Name in Ante-Nicene Christology,” VC 57 (2003): 115–158.
60 gieschen
(Dan 7:9). This one is often identified in the Parables as “the Lord of the Spir-
its,” a translation of the Ethiopic title that reflects the Hebrew title ‫ְיה ָוה ְצָבאוֹת‬
(“YHWH of Hosts”; Isa 6:3).27 These chapters also testify repeatedly that the Lord
of the Spirits has a special and unique name.28 Two examples will suffice to
illustrate this point. 1 En. 38:2 asserts that “sinners” deny this name: “Where (will
be) the dwelling places of the sinners, and where (will be) the resting place of
those who have denied the name of the Lord of the Spirits?” 1 En. 49:7 notes,
however, that the righteous know and praise this name: “Their lips will praise
the name of the Lord of the Spirits.” That this “name” of the Lord of the Spirits
is ‫( יהוה‬hereafter YHWH), God’s unique personal name, is self-evident for any
Jewish reader or hearer of this text.
The Lord of the Spirits is not the only one to possess the divine name accord-
ing to the Parables. Far from being a scene of eschatological triumph inspired
by Daniel 7, 1 En. 48 depicts the Son of Man as a preexistent being who was
given a special name by the Lord of the Spirits in the primal “hour” prior to cre-
ation. Because YHWH is the only being that existed prior to creation, this Jewish
text expresses a very profound understanding of the relationship between the
Lord of the Spirits and the Son of Man: “And in that hour, that son of man was
named in the presence of the Lord of the Spirits, and his name before the Head
of Days. Even before the sun and the constellations were created, before the
stars of heaven were made, his name was named before the Lord of the Spirits”
(1 En. 48:2–3).
Although this scene is certainly developed from the naming of the servant
in Isa 49:1–2 (“YHWH called me from the womb; from the body of my mother
he named my name”), the Isaiah text has been reinterpreted by changing the
setting of the naming: it does not take place at the calling of the Son of Man
from a mother’s womb, but it is done prior to creation.29 In 1 En., “the name” by
which the Son of Man “was named” appears to be the divine name of the Lord
of the Spirits because there are numerous references to “the name of the Lord of
the Spirits” throughout the Parables.30 Especially noteworthy is the description
27 Matthew Black, “Two Unusual Nomina Dei in the Second Vision of Enoch,” in William
C. Weinrich, ed., The New Testament Age: Essays in Honor of Bo Riecke, 2 vols (Macon, GA:
Mercer, 1984), 1.53–59.
28 The phrase “the name of the Lord of Spirits” is used repeatedly in these chapters; see 1 En.
38:2; 39;7, 9, 14; 40:4, 6; 41:2, 8; 43:4; 45:1, 2, 3; 46:7; 47:2; 48:7, 10; 50:2, 3; 53:6; 55:4; 61:3, 9, 11,
13; 63:7; 67:8.
29 For the influence of Isaiah on the Son of Man in 1 En., see Nickelsburg and VanderKam,
1Enoch 2, 116–120, 169.
30 Although there is clear testimony that this name is possessed before creation by the Son
of Man, it should be noted that an enigmatic discussion about the Evil One revealing this
that follows in this scene: “And all who dwell on the earth will fall and worship
before him [the Son of Man]; and they will glorify and bless and sing hymns to
the name of the Lord of the Spirits” (1 En. 48:5). They will use the name of the
Lord of the Spirits in worshipping the Son of Man because both possess the
same divine name.31
The fulfillment of this bold promise is depicted in the eschatological
enthronement scene near the conclusion of the Parables: “And they [the righ-
teous] had great joy, and they blessed and glorified and exalted, because the
name of that Son of Man had been revealed to them” (1 En. 69:26). This scene
may have been understood as the fulfillment of what Isaiah promised about the
eschatological revelation of the divine name, “My people will know my name
in that day, that I am he who speaks” (Isa 52:6). The significance of the reveal-
ing of the name of the Son of Man becomes readily apparent when one sees
the relationship between the divine name, the oath used in creation, and the
name of the Son of Man in 1 En. 69.32 Immediately preceding the dramatic rev-
elation of the name of the Son of Man to the righteous, 1 En. has an elaborate
ascription of the creation and its sustenance to this “powerful and strong” oath
(1 En. 69:14–25). This description of the cosmogenic power of the divine name
reflects similar understandings of the divine name as powerful in contempo-
rary Jewish and Christian literature, even as the word used in creation.33
1.6 The Worship of the Son of Man

The Danielic “one like a son of man” is given universal dominion and glory, with
the result that all serve him (Dan 7:14). The status of the Enochic Son of Man is
similarly depicted, but worship of him is given explicit testimony and is implied
to begin on earth prior to the eschatological revelation of the Son of Man: “And
all who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship before him [the Son of
Man], and they will glorify and bless and sing hymns to the name of the Lord of
name to Michael and placing it in his hand (1 En. 69:14–15) introduces the verses that
describe this name as the source of creation (1 En. 69:16–26).
31 The concept of persons sharing the same divine name is prominent and important in
first-century Christianity (e.g., Matt 28:19; Rev 3:12; 14:1); see Gieschen, “Divine Name in
Ante-Nicene Christology,” 115–158.
32 Regarding the relationship of this enigmatic chapter to mystical contemplation of the
divine name, see Daniel C. Olson, Enoch: A New Translation (New Richland Hills, TX: Bibal
Press, 2004), 128–131 at 270–273.
33 Ps 124:8; Pr Man 2–3; Jub. 36:7; 3 En. 13:1; Heb 1.3; 1Clem. 59.8; Herm. Sim. 9.14.5. The under-
standing that the divine name was the word used in creation probably originates from the
close relationship between the divine name ‫ יהוה‬and the creative command ‫“( יהי‬let there
be”).
62 gieschen
Spirits” (1 En. 48:5). Worship of the Son of Man is prominent at the eschatolog-
ical judgment: “And the kings and the mighty and all who possess the land will
bless and glorify and exalt him who rules over all, who was hidden” (1 En. 62:6).
This worship is stated again a few lines later, but even more explicitly: “And all
the kings and the mighty and the exalted and those who rule the land will fall
on their faces in his presence; and they will worship and set their hope on that
Son of Man” (1 En. 62:9; cf. 60:6). While worship of the “one like a son of man”
in Daniel is implicit, it is presented with great clarity in 1 Enoch.
1.7 The Son of Man Identified as a Human

Perhaps the most shocking revelation in the Parables comes in the final scene
(1 En. 71) when the mysterious identity of this preexistence messianic deliverer
is revealed in an even fuller way.
And he took my spirit—even me, Enoch—to the heaven of heavens, and

I saw there, as it were, ⟨a house⟩ built of hailstones, and between those
stones were tongues of living fire. … And there came out of that house
Michael and Raphael and Gabriel and Phanuel and many holy angels
without number. And with them was the Head of Days, and his head was
white and pure as wool, and his apparel was indescribable. And I fell on
my face and all my flesh melted, and my spirit was transformed. … And
that angel came to me and greeted me with his voice and said to me, “You
are that Son of Man who was born for righteousness, and righteousness
dwells on you, and the righteousness of the Head of Days will not forsake
you. … And all will walk in your path since righteousness will never for-
sake you; with you will be their dwelling and with you, their lot, and from
you they will not be separated forever and forever and ever.”
1 En. 71:5, 11, 14, 16
This is an amazing scene that makes it clear the messianic Son of Man does not
just appear as a man, but is a man. The human Enoch is transformed thorough
his ascension to the heavenly throne and is identified with the pre-existent and
hidden Son of Man. Very seldom in Second Temple Jewish literature does one
read of an enthroned heavenly figure being also an actual human.34
34 Another occurrence is the exalted angel/messenger Israel being also Jacob in Pr. Jos. frag-
ment (cf. the description of Jacob in Jos. Asen. 22:6–8); see Gieschen, Angelomorphic
Christology, 137–142. For background on the transformation of Enoch into a heavenly being
in literature related to 1Enoch, see Andrei A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, TSAJ 107
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).
In summation, while affirming the significant continuity between Daniel

7 and 1Enoch, these seven characteristics of the Enochic Son of Man are not
explicitly found in Daniel: the Son of Man is used as a title for a messianic figure;
he is the eschatological judge; he is preexistent prior to creation with the Lord
of the Spirits and hidden until his end-time revelation; he is seated on God’s
throne, he shares the divine name of the Lord of the Spirits; he is worshipped
as divine; and he is identified to be also a human. All of these are important
characteristics of Jesus as presented in the four Gospels.35 1 En. 37–71 provides
solid historical evidence that Jews prior to Jesus and the evangelists were think-
ing about the Son of Man with such characteristics. These chapters also evince a
rather complex understanding of Jewish monotheism with a second divine fig-
ure who has divine functions, shares the divine throne, shares the divine name,
receives worship, and yet is also a human.
2 Conclusion
In light of the depiction of the Son of Man in 1Enoch, what may have been puz-
zling for Jesus’ earliest followers was not that he spoke of himself as the Son
of Man, but specifically how he spoke of himself as the Son of Man. Jesus is
not only to be revealed as the Son of Man when he is enthroned in heaven
at the end of time, but—most importantly—on earth upon the cross in time
(e.g., Matt 24:64; John 12:23, 32–34). The so-called “earthly” and “suffering” Son
of Man sayings show a redefinition of some Jewish Son of Man expectations
in light of humiliation and suffering (e.g., the servant songs of Isaiah). Oscar
Cullmann reflected upon this redefinition decades ago.
One may ask why Jesus preferred the title Son of Man to that of the
ebed Yahweh rather than the reverse. This becomes quite understandable
when we consider that the Son of Man idea is more comprehensive. … It
was therefore more appropriate to subordinate the ebed Yahweh concept
to that of the Son of Man. Jesus did this in such a way that the vocation
of the ebed becomes, so to speak, the main content of the Son of Man’s
earthly work. … Both the “Suffering Servant” and the “Son of Man” already
existed in Second Temple Judaism. But Jesus’ combination of precisely
35 See Leslie W. Walck, “The Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch and the Gospels,” in Gabriele
Boccaccini, ed., Enoch and the Messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 299–337; see also Leslie W. Walck, The Son of Man in the Parable
of Enoch and in Matthew (London: T&T Clark, 2011).
64 gieschen
these two titles was something completely new. “Son of Man” represents
the highest conceivable declaration of exaltation in Judaism; ebed Yah-
weh is the expression of the deepest humiliation. … This is the unheard-of
new act of Jesus, that he united these two apparently contradictory tasks
in his self-consciousness, and that he expressed that union in his life and
teaching.36
Much like the parables (e.g., Matt 13:10–17), the Son of Man sayings reveal Jesus’
true identity to those who believe he is the Son of God, but are at the same time
confusing to those who reject him (i.e., “How can this ‘man’ be the preexistent,
end-time ‘Son of Man’ promised by Daniel?”). To those who do not receive him
for who he actually is, he will remain an enigmatic son of man (i.e., “a human
offspring”) who will be vindicated at the end and shown to be the Son of Man
(Matt 26:63–64). The Son of Man sayings in the Gospels, therefore, do not show
a dismissal of Jewish Son of Man expectations based upon Daniel 7 or 1 Enoch,
but evince a further redefining of these expectations by pointing to Jesus’ cru-
cifixion as where the Son of Man will be revealed and the cosmic reign foretold
in Daniel 7 begins (e.g., Matt 26:64), a reign that will be consummated on the
last day (e.g., Matt 25:31). The Gospels present a radical interpretation of Daniel
7, not only in the so-called earthly and suffering Son of Man sayings, but espe-
cially in presenting the crucifixion as the commencement of the Son of Man’s
eschatological enthronement and reign.
This brief study has sought to demonstrate that there are several character-
istics of the Enochic Son of Man that are important for understanding the Son
of Man in the Gospels even while recognizing the unique redefinition of Jew-
ish Son of Man expectations that are also present in the Gospels. Joel Marcus
offers this witty observation about the conclusion that the Parables of 1 Enoch is
pre-Christian and, thus, reflects Jewish conceptions of the Son of Man present
before and at the time of Jesus:
This conclusion is supported by the way in which Jesus, in the Gospels,

generally treats the Son of Man as a known quantity, never bothering to
explain the term, and the way in which certain of this figure’s character-
istics, such as his identity with the Messiah or his prerogative of judging,
are taken for granted. With apologies to Voltaire, we may say that if the
36 Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament, Revised Edition, trans. Shirley
C. Guthrie and Charles A.M. Hall (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), 160–161. As noted
above, 1 En. has already depicted its Son of Man with some features from Isaiah’s Ser-
vant.
Enochic Son of Man had not existed, it would have been necessary to
invent him to explain the Son of Man sayings in the Gospels.37
Acknowledgments
This essay is offered to honor my friend, Fr. Alexander Golitzin. I have benefit-
ted from his writings, conversations, and his Marquette University students for
almost three decades. His commitment to both scholarship and the church is
mirrored in my own life of being both a professor and pastor.
37 Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 27 (New
York: Doubleday, 2000), 530.
chapter 3
Driven Away with a Stick: The Femininity of the

Godhead in y. Ber. 12d, the Emergence of Rabbinic
Modalist Orthodoxy, and the Christian Binitarian
Complex
Silviu N. Bunta
This article, in a very preliminary form, was my very first contribution (in 2005)
to the seminar on the “Jewish Roots of Christian Mysticism” which then Father,
but now Bishop Alexander and we, his doctoral students, put together at Mar-
quette University. Therefore it seems to me to be only fitting that I present to
him this final form of the article as a very small token of my gratitude for every-
thing he has done for us, his students, and for the whole field of Christian and
Jewish mysticism in antiquity.
The Masoretic text of Gen 1:26–27 confusingly reads: “And God said, ‘Let
us create humanity (‫ )אדם‬in our image (‫)בצלמנו‬, according to our likeness
(‫ ’… )כדמותנו‬And God created humanity (‫ )האדם‬in his image (‫)בצלמו‬, in the
image of God He created him (‫)אתו‬, male and female (‫ )זכר ונקבה‬He created
them (‫)אתם‬.” The Septuagint version contains the same grammatical oddities:
“And God said, ‘Let us make humanity (ἄνθρωπον) according to our image and
according to likeness …’ And God made humanity (ἄνθρωπον), according to the
image of God He made him (αὐτόν), male and female (ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ) He cre-
ated them (αὐτούς).”
In an article published two decades ago,1 Johannes C. de Moor decried the
lack of sensitivity among contemporary biblical scholars toward a century old
statement by Elisabeth Cady Stanton that the creation of both male and female
humanity in the image of God implies a male-female bifurcation in the divine.2
Regrettably de Moor’s complaint is still very much actual two decades later.
There de Moor proposed that Gen 1:27 be read in the context of ancient Near
1 Johannes C. de Moor, “The Duality in God and Man: Gen. 1:26–27 as P’s Interpretation of the
Yahwistic Creation Account,” in Johannes C. de Moor, ed., Intertextuality in Ugarit and Israel
(Leiden: Brill, 1998), 112–125.
2 Elisabeth Cady Stanton, ed., The Woman’s Bible, 2 vols. (New York: European Publishing Com-
pany, 1895, 1898), 1:14.

driven away with a stick 67
Eastern conceptions of mixed gendered deities and in light of the fact that sev-
eral other texts in the Hebrew Bible attribute female characteristics to God.
Therefore, for de Moor androgynous humanity reflects an androgynous God.
However, de Moor does not provide any patristic or rabbinic sources that sug-
gest the androgyny of God. The only text he can put forward is Odes of Solomon
6:13–14:
And before they had existed, I recognized them; and imprinted a seal on
their faces. I fashioned their members, and my own breasts I prepared for
them, that they might drink my holy milk and live by it.3
Unfortunately de Moor hastily categorizes the Syriac text as gnostic.4 While

the passage does suggest a certain divine femininity, it is far from describing
“the creation of mankind … as the work of an androgynous being,” as de Moor
would have it.5 He does not seem aware of the ever-increasing number of stud-
ies on the feminine depictions of the godhead in early gnostic movements;
nor is de Moor seemingly familiar with Irenaeus’ explicit mention that “some”
(followers of Marcion) misguidedly maintain, based precisely on Gen 1:26–28,
that “humanity (ἄνθρωπος), made according to the image and likeness of God,
[was] masculo-feminine (ἀρσενόθηλυς).”6 Moreover, there is also an increasing
amount of studies on the femininity of the Holy Spirit in early Christianity, par-
ticularly in its Syrian branches.7
3 Translation from James H. Charlesworth, “Odes of Solomon,” in idem, ed., The Old Testament
Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), 2:725–771 at 742.
4 De Moor, “The Duality in God and Man,” 124.
5 De Moor, “The Duality in God and Man,” 124.
6 Haer. 1.18.2; my translation of the Greek text in William Wigan Harvey, Sancti Irenaei episcopi
Lugdunensis libri quinque adversus haereses, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1857), 1:172. For gnostic traditions about the divine male-female couple that acts as the image
and source of human gender differentiation see Peter Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty. Feminine
Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2002), 58–78.
7 See particularly Sebastian Brock, “The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature,”
in Janet Martin Soskice, ed., After Eve. Women, Theology and the Christian Tradition (Lon-
don: Marshall Pickering, 1990), 73–88, reprinted in a slightly revised and updated form in
Sebastian Brock, The Holy Spirit in the Syrian Baptismal Tradition (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias
Press, 2008), 175–188; idem, Fire from Heaven: Studies in Syriac Theology and Liturgy, Variorum
Collected Studies Series 863 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 249–257; Sarah Coakley,
“Introduction—Gender, Trinitarian Analogies, and the Pedagogy of The Song,” in Sarah Coak-
ley, ed., Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 1–14; eadem, “ ‘Femininity’ and
the Holy Spirit?,” in Monica Furlong, ed., Mirror to the Church: Reflections on Sexism (London:
68 bunta
My intention here is not to review these studies on early Syrian feminization

of God or to offer corrections or additional support to de Moor’s argument.
Rather, I am looking for the particular interpretive processes through which
classical rabbinic exegesis, particularly attentive to textual oddities,8 might
have perceived an implication in Gen 1:26–28 that there is a male-female bifur-
cation in the divine. My argument here is twofold. First, I suggest that y. Ber. 12d
exhibits exactly that textual sensitivity which, as de Moor laments, contempo-
rary scholars in general do not possess. Second, I propose that the talmudic
text puts forth a binitarian reading of the difficult biblical passage, reading in
which the divine constitutes a duality reflected in the human couple. This pro-
posal challenges the prevailing scholarly opinion that the early rabbis do not
present any understanding of a masculine-feminine duality in the divine, not
even in their concept of the Shekinah.
1 Classical Rabbinic Judaism on the Godhead
In his 1960 book On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, Gershom Scholem argued:
The Kabbalistic conception of Shekhinah … is a radical departure from the

old Rabbinical conception … Nowhere in the older literature is a distinc-
tion made between God and His Shekhinah; the Shekhinah is not a special
hypostasis distinguished from God as a whole. It is very different in the
usage of the Kabbalah … Here the Shekhinah becomes an aspect of God, a
quasi-independent feminine element within Him. Such an independence
SPCK, 1988), 124–135; Susan A. Harvey, “Feminine Imagery for the Divine: The Holy Spirit, the
Odes of Solomon, and Early Syriac Tradition,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 37 (1993): 11–
39; Verna E.F. Harrison, “Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology,” JTS 41 (1990): 441–471;
Yves Congar, “The Motherhood in God and the Femininity of the Holy Spirit,” in idem, I Believe
in the Holy Spirit, 3 vols. (New York: Seabury Press, 1983), 3.155–164; Gedaliahu Stroumsa, “Le
couple de l’ange et de l’esprit: Traditions juives et Chrétiennes,” RB 88 (1981): 42–61; Robert
Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 312–
320.
8 For the central role that textual oddities play in early rabbinic interpretation, see espe-
cially David Stern, “Midrash and Indeterminacy,” Critical Inquiry 15 (1988): 132–161; Daniel
Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University
Press: 1990); Gerald L. Bruns, Hermeneutics, Ancient and Modern (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1992), 104–132; James Kugel, In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994); idem, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge: Belknap
Press, 1999).
… is realized in a sense in the third sefirah, which is the upper mother or

upper Shekhinah, but also, strange to say, the demiurgic potency.9
According to Scholem, the femininity of the Shekinah is also a kabbalistic nov-

elty:
In all the numerous references to the Shekhinah in the Talmud and the
Midrashim … there is no hint that it represents a feminine element in
God … Nowhere is there a dualism, with the Shekhinah, as the feminine,
opposed to the “Holy One, praise be to Him,” as the masculine element
in God. The introduction of this idea was one of the most important and
lasting innovations of Kabbalism.10
For lack of a better explanation for this radical kabbalistic innovation, Scholem
resorts to Eliade, in spite of the fact that, as Joseph Dan perceptively notes, he
“fought throughout his life” against the Eliadean/Jungian archetypal approach
of religious phenomena.11 “The Kabbalists,” says Scholem, “had uncovered one
of the primordial religious impulses still latent in Judaism.”12 For Scholem, the
last pre-Kabbalistic expressions of this impulse lie in Gnosticism, the second
pier of an arch that passes over the classical rabbis.13
Ever since Scholem’s pioneering research scholars have consistently
assumed that concepts of a divine couple or divine femininity are completely
inexistent in classical rabbinic Judaism and have repeatedly emphasized the
striking chronological gap between the presence of the concept in Second Tem-
9 Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. R. Manheim (6th ed.; New
York: Schocken Books, 1977), 104–105.
10 Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1995),
229.
11 “Foreword” to Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead (New York: Scho-
cken Books, 1991), 3–14 at 8.
12 Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 105.
13 At times Scholem posits a direct dependence of the kabbalists on “gnostic exegesis” (On
the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, 105); thus he assumes the kabbalistic identification of the
Shekinah with the community of Israel was “a specifically Jewish metamorphosis in which
so much of the gnostic substance entered into Jewish tradition” (Scholem, On the Kab-
balah and Its Symbolism, 106). See also his Major Trends, 229–230. However, on another
occasion, as Peter Schäfer notes, Scholem is content to assume that kabbalistic innova-
tions “took shape in the course of the creative reflection of anonymous Jewish God-seekers
of the twelfth century upon the meaning of the images of their own tradition” (On the
Mystical Shape of the Godhead, 170–171). See comments in Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty,
139–140.
70 bunta
ple and gnostic sources, on the one side, and kabbalistic mysticism, on the
other. More recently, Peter Schäfer, who otherwise disagrees fundamentally
with Scholem’s reconstruction of the development and nature of ancient Jew-
ish mysticism,14 expressed a very similar opinion:
There [in rabbinic Judaism], it [the Shekinah] refers to the presence of

God in the world and is always synonymous with God; as such it does
not have any feminine characteristics. In the Kabbalah, however, the
Shekinah is not only included as a distinctive principle within the inner
divine life, but this distinctive principle is explicitly, and quite graphically,
described as female.15
Moreover, just like Scholem, Schäfer also locates the closest similar portraits of
the Shekinah in Gnosticism.16
This circumvention of classical rabbinic Judaism is problematic at a very
basic, intuitive level. As Moshe Idel remarks astutely on the presupposition
of a similar circumvention of rabbinic sources when it comes to the concept
of the cosmic Adam, “any suggestion that originally Jewish conceptions were
suppressed for centuries in Jewish sources has inherent difficulties.”17 More-
over, while there is a certain amount of discontinuity between the kabbalistic
texts of the Middle Ages and classical rabbinic thought, they show in general
a significant and surprising continuity, particularly on the conception of the
divine, in which they exhibit the same modalist orthodoxy.18 Quite probably
14 For this disagreement see particularly Peter Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); idem, Gershom Scholem Reconsidered: The
Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish Mysticism. 12th Sacks Lecture (Oxford: Oxford Centre for
Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, 1986).
15 Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty, 4.
16 Ibid., 142–143.
17 Moshe Idel, “Enoch is Metatron,” Imm 24/25 (1990): 220–240 at 223. Despite these dif-
ficulties, he finds the suggestion “more convenient than the alternative,” which is that
originally gnostic conceptions penetrated into Judaism, were transmitted orally for cen-
turies, and were committed to writing only in medieval times (“Enoch is Metatron,” 223).
18 On the rabbis’ modalist orthodoxy, see particularly Alan Segal, Two Powers in Heaven. Early
Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977) and Daniel Boyarin,
Border Lines. The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva-
nia Press, 2004). Several Christian sources suggest that modalism was a widespread rab-
binic orthodoxy by the fourth century. Thus, several of Basil of Caesarea’s letters identify
Judaism with the modalism of Sabellius and Marcellus (letters 189, 210, 226, and 263). In
letter 210 the Asia Minor bishop straightforwardly contends that “Sabellianism is Judaism
brought into the preaching of the gospel under the disguise of Christianity” (letter 210.3;
in polemics against the philosophers of the early Middle Ages, the inventors of
“Jewish monotheism”19 for whom the Shekinah is a created power, in most kab-
balistic thought the one godhead unfolds in emanations or energies (sefirot)
that embody different aspects of the divine essence. In this context the Shek-
inah as the tenth and lowest of the ten sefirot is, to quote Schäfer, “included as
a distinctive principle within the inner divine life.”20 Moreover, the Shekinah is
paired with the ninth sefirah, a masculine principle, in quite a sexual embrace.
Together, according to the earliest extant kabbalistic writing, the Bahir, they
form the two Wheels of the throne of glory:
What is the ninth? He said to them: The ninth and tenth are together,
one opposite the other … They are like two Wheels (‫)אופנים‬. One inclines
toward the north, while the other inclines toward the west. They reach
down to the lowest earth.
Bahir 16921
In this regard the language of the kabbalists replicates quite closely the classical
rabbinic ideal of modalist orthodoxy:
One passage says: His throne was fiery flames; and another passage says:
Till thrones were places, and One that was ancient of days did sit (Dan
7:9)!—There is no contradiction: one [throne] for Him, and one for David;
my translation of the Greek text in Yves Courtonne, Saint Basile. Lettres, 3 vols. [Paris: Les
Belles Lettres, 1957, 1961, 1966]). For the early Kabbalah, the depiction in certain kabbalistic
texts of the fourth and fifth sefirot, respectively the right and the left hand of the godhead,
as the divine mercy (‫ )חסד‬and justice (‫ )דין‬is particularly significant.
19 By “Jewish monotheism” I refer to the view according to which only one being, God, pos-
sesses divinity or the “attributes of God.” Until late medieval philosophy Judaism did not
subscribe to this monotheistic conception of the divine. On the contrary, Jewish sources
abound with texts in which God shares his divinity/attributes, including omniscience,
omnipotence, eternity, and even his quintessential name, with other beings. If there is
any difference between God and these other beings, it is relational rather than ontologi-
cal: while God possesses divinity in and of himself, in an absolute way, these other beings
possess it in a relative way, from God. As Elliot Wolfson has repeatedly pointed out, on
the background of modalism ancient and medieval Jewish sources collapse all ontologi-
cal boundaries between angels and other divine manifestations, on the one hand, and the
divine, on the other (see for example Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagina-
tion in Medieval Jewish Mysticism [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997], 256–260).
For further discussions, see the seminal study of Peter Hayman, “Monotheism—A Mis-
used Word in Jewish Studies?,” JJS 42 (1991): 1–15.
20 Mirror of His Beauty, 4.
21 Aryeh Kaplan, The Bahir (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1989), 64.
72 bunta
this is the view of R. Akiba. Said R. Jose the Galilean to him: Akiba,
how long wilt thou treat the Divine Presence as profane! Rather, [it must
mean], one for justice (‫ )דין‬and one for grace (‫)צדקה‬. Did he accept [this
explanation from him, or did he not accept it]?—Come and hear: One
for justice and one for grace; this is the view of R. Akiba. Said R. Eleazar
b. ʿAzariah to him: Akiba, what hast thou to do with Aggadah? Cease thy
talk, and turn to [the laws concerning defilement through] leprosy-signs
and tent-covering! Rather, [it must mean] one for a throne and one for
a stool; the throne to sit upon, the stool for a footrest, for it is said: The
heaven is My throne, and the earth is My foot-rest (Isa 66:1).
b. Ḥag. 14a22
Rabbi Akiba opportunely converts to the modalist orthodoxy, thus narrowly

shunning the destiny of the two-power heretic Aher, unveiled shortly after
Rabbi Akiba’s story.23 Nevertheless, the presence of this story of conversion
in the rabbinic corpus raises the intriguing possibility that certain rabbis were
not too quick to abandon traditional non-modalist theologies and to adopt the
newly found rabbinic orthodoxy.24 As the stories about both Rabbi Akiba and
Aher indicate, the rabbinic orthodoxy was not quite able to drown out com-
pletely the dissenting voices. The task, undoubtedly desired among most of
22 This and all subsequent translations of the Babylonian Talmud are from Isidore Epstein,
ed., Babylonian Talmud. Hebrew-English Edition (London: Soncino Press, 1983).
23 b. Ḥag. 15a; see also 3 En. 16:2. For comments on this story see Boyarin, Border Lines, 139–
145; Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, 60–73.
24 The scene in b. Ḥag. 14a has been deemed quite appropriately “the apostasy of rabbi Akiba”
(Boyarin, Border Lines, 139). The paradigm increasingly predominant in current scholar-
ship, introduced by Naomi Janowitz (“Rabbis and Their Opponents: The Construction of
the ‘Min’ in Rabbinic Anecdotes,” JECS 6 [1998]: 449–462), proposes that the views com-
monly regarded as heretical by the late rabbinic corpus constituted traditional ideological
options in the pre-orthodox environment of late antiquity Judaism. As it has been pointed
out, since Judaism was not yet producing the conception of heresy and orthodoxy, “ ‘Two
Powers in Heaven’ could not have been an early category of heresy, but could only have
been one of the options for the Jewish belief at the time” (Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven,”
333). In the words of the same scholar, “the orthodoxy that the Rabbis were concerned
about was an orthodoxy that they were making [my emphasis] by constructing ‘Two Pow-
ers in Heaven’ as heresy” (Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven,” 332). Traditional options were
repudiated and bordered out, thus constructing a heretical “other” or a designated out-
sider and concomitantly defining an orthodox “self.” On these points, see also Boyarin,
Border Lines; idem, “Two Powers in Heaven,” esp. 332–339; Christine E. Hayes, “Displaced
Self-Perceptions: The Deployment of Minim and Romans in B. Sanhedrin 90b–91a,” in
Hayim Lapin, ed., Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine (Potomac:
University Press of Maryland, 1998), 249–289.
the rabbis, was from its foundation impractical, since the rabbinic “orthodoxy”
itself was tempted to indulge on occasion in the theological ideas that it oth-
erwise painstakingly attempted to exorcise. Furthermore, one cannot expect
such consistency from the rabbis as to assume that in their corpus all resilience
toward their emerging orthodoxy would be unfailingly pointed out and con-
demned.25 It is reasonable to expect that a complete expulsion of the “other”
would have injured or marked the “self” to a certain extent. In my estimation
this is precisely the case with y. Ber. 12d: the rabbis succumb internally to that
which they refute externally.
2 y. Ber. 12d: The Minim Are Somewhat Right
In light of all the above considerations, the common early midrash on Gen 1:26–
28 (Gen. Rab. 8:9, Deut. Rab. 2:13, and y. Ber. 12d) gains a particular significance
for our topic. The version of the midrash in y. Ber. 12d reads:
The minim asked R. Simlai: “How many gods created the world?” He said
to them: “Do you ask me? Go and ask the first man, as it is written, ‘Ask
now the former days which were before thee, since God created man upon
the earth’ (Deut 4:32).26 It is not written here ‘(they) created’ (‫)בראו‬, but
‘(he) created’ (‫( )ברא‬Gen 1:1).” They said to him, “It is written, ‘In the begin-
25 The Two Powers heresies and the alternative rabbinic orthodoxy have been reevaluated in
more recent scholarship. The paradigm that used to govern most of the scholarship on the
topic tended to replicate rather than deconstruct critically the rabbinic agendas, assuming
with the classical rabbis that the Two Powers and other heresies were differences either
from without or from the margins of orthodoxy, inoculating and rarely infesting an other-
wise firm rabbinic “orthodoxy.” To the deconstruction of this paradigm, see the insightful
remarks in Daniel Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven; Or, The Making of a Heresy,” in Hindy
Najman and Judith H. Newman, ed., The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor
of James L. Kugel, JSJSS 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 331–370 at 335–336; Janowitz, “Rabbis
and Their Opponents,” 449–462. Yet, I would like to point out that Janowitz is too opti-
mistic about the effectiveness of rabbinic orthodoxy: “Only a few decades ago late antique
Judaism was reconstructed through the eyes of the rabbis with, not surprisingly, rabbis at
the center of the picture as conveyors of normative, orthodox Judaism. Attention to new
sources (archaeological finds, Jewish texts written in Greek) and new questions (where
are the women?) has so changed our view that we now find ourselves asking: How is it
that rabbis were able to build an institutional basis that so thoroughly drowned out the
many other voices?” (ibid., 449).
26 As Alan Segal already noted, different versions of the story make reference to different
authorities at this point (Two Powers in Heaven, 126). Gen. Rab. 8:9 refers to the first days
and Deut Rab. 2:13 mentions the record of creation.
74 bunta
ning gods (‫ )אלהים‬created’ (Gen 1:1).” “Is it written ‘(they) created’? It is

only written, ‘(he) created’ (‫)ברא‬.” R. Simlai said, “In every passage where
the minim go wrong, the answer to them is close by.” They (the minim)
returned and asked him, “What of that which is written ‘Let us make man
in our image (‫)בצלמנו‬, after our likeness’ (Gen 1:26)?” He said to them, “It
is not written here ‘And they created man in their image,’ but ‘And God
created man in his image (‫( ’)בצלמו‬Gen 1:27).” His disciples said to him:
“Rabbi, thou has driven away these men with a stick (‫)בקנה‬. But what dost
thou answer to us?” He said to them, “At the first, Adam was created out
of the dust, and Eve was created out of the man. From Adam onward (it
is said) ‘in our image according to our likeness.’ It is impossible for man
to exist without woman, and it is impossible for woman to exist without
man, and it is impossible for both to exist without the Shekinah (‫)שכינה‬.”
y. Ber. 12d27
The dialogue of rabbi Simlai with the minim is followed by four more confronta-
tions with similar double answers.28
The key to this passage lies in its structure and linguistic conventions. Many
other classical rabbinic texts contain stories of the same structural pattern—an
outsider asks a polemical question, the rabbinic authority replies dismissively,
the outsider walks away, the disciples complain that the reply is unsatisfactory,
and the rabbinic authority offers the real explanation, different from his ini-
tial answer. As an example b. Hul. 27b contains the following confrontation
between Rabbi Samuel the Cappadocian and “a Galilean”:
[A Galilean] put to [R. Samuel of Cappadocia] this further question: One

verse says, “And God said: Let the waters bring forth abundantly the mov-
ing creature that hath life, and let birds fly above the earth” (Gen 1:20),
from which it would appear that birds were created out of the water; but
another verse says, “And the Lord God formed out of the ground every
beast of the field and every bird of the air” (Gen 2:19), from which it would
appear that they were created out of the earth?—He replied: They were
created out of the alluvial mud. He thereupon noticed his disciples look-
ing at each other with surprise. You are no doubt displeased, said he,
because I brushed aside my opponent with a straw (‫)בקש‬. The truth is that
27 Translation from Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, 124. For the original text I have consulted the
Vilna edition (1835), the Leiden manuscript Or. 4720, and Rabbi Shlomo Sirilio’s 1875 Mainz
edition of the tractate Berachot. There is insignificant variation among these sources.
28 Y. Ber. 12d–13a.
they were created out of the water but they were brought before Adam
only in order that he might name them. Others say that he replied to the
[Roman] general in accordance with the latter view, but to his disciples he
gave the first explanation, since they [birds] are mentioned in connection
with the expression: And He formed.
b. Hul. 27b
The double answer here, as in similar stories,29 marks a switch from a sim-
plistic, even self-evident argument (commonly the rabbinic authority finds
the answer in a weakness of the question itself or turns the question against
the inquirer), to a real explanation. The rabbinic authority alternates between
opposite views. Nevertheless, Rabbi Samuel clearly offers real explanations
only to his disciples.
The minim of Rabbi Simlai wish to prove that there is a bifurcation or a plu-
rality in the godhead based on the scriptural text. They appeal to the divine
council imagery of Gen 1:1 and 1:26 to support the concept that “many gods”
created the world. Rabbi Simlai’s response is based on the same exegetical prin-
ciple attributed in b. San. 38b to Rabbi Yohanan, his teacher and colleague: the
answer is in a nearby text. Thus the plural ‫ אלהים‬is accompanied by the singular
‫ ברא‬and the plural pronominal suffix in ‫ בצלמינו‬is followed by the singular suf-
fix in ‫בצלמו‬, solutions that Rabbi Yohanan also uses against similarly-minded
minim in b. San. 38b. The disciples seem to accept their teacher’s interpretive
principle—namely that the key to every plural is in a nearby singular, specifi-
cally a plural noun or pronoun takes a singular verb.
However, as it is true for all the initial, exoteric answers that the rabbis offer
to their interlocutors in b. Hul. 27b and similar narratives, Rabbi Simlai’s disci-
ples find their teacher’s response to the heretics unsatisfactory. It is, as the text
itself would have it, as ineffective and inept an admonition as driving someone
away with a “stick,” a “straw,” as in b. Hul. 27b, or a “broken reed,” as other par-
allel stories would have it.30 The fact that the Galilean in b. Hul. 27b and Rabbi
Simlai’s minim in our y. Ber. 12d, all outsiders to an equal degree, leave without
receiving a real explanation, that they accept the stick or the straw, seems to
function as a negative reflection on their intellectual perspicacity. In contrast,
29 See also Exod. Rab. 3:17; Exod. Rab. 29:1; Num. Rab. 9:48; Num. Rab. 19:8 (parallels in Pesiqta
Rabbati 14, Tanḥuma Ḥuqat 26, Pesiqta de Rab Kahana pisqa 4 [ed. Mandelbaum], uses
‫ ;)קנה‬y. San. 19b (uses ‫ ;)קנה‬Lev. Rab. 4:6 (uses ‫)קנה‬. Some of these passages and Rabbi
Simlai’s disingenuousness have been noted in David Daube, “Public Denouncement and
Private Explanation in the Gospels,” ExpTim 57 (1945–1946): 175–177.
30 See, for example, Eccl. Rab. 7:16.
76 bunta
the rabbinic authority can only be praised for his ability to employ efficiently
such ineffective means of admonition.31 As also Rabbi Simlai’s disciples can
receive praise for detecting the feebleness, the stick of their teacher’s answer:
the interpretive strategy cannot be applied to Gen 1:26. As Alan Segal rightly
points out, “the correct understanding of Gen 1:26 was not evident.”32 In Gen
1:26 both subject and verb are plural. The only solution “at hand” could be the
singular of Gen 1:27, but it is conceivable that a god can create alone (hence,
the singular of Gen 1:27) as a delegate of a divine assembly (the plural of Gen
1:26). Rabbi Simlai’s appeal to Gen 1:27 without elucidating Gen 1:26 in itself
does not offer sufficient proof, at least to his astute disciples, that God was not
accompanied by other heavenly beings in conceiving the creation.
Just like Rabbi Samuel in b. Hul. 27b, Rabbi Simlai does not simply dismiss
the disciples’ confusion; he appears fully aware of the fact that he did not offer
a true rebuttal to the minim’s question about Gen 1:26. Just like in the narra-
tive about Rabbi Samuel, Rabbi Simlai’s evasiveness toward the minim and the
secretiveness of the ensuing real, esoteric answer set the stage for an inevitable
conclusion: the minim were somewhat right, at least in regard to Gen 1:26.
Indeed, a closer analysis of the esoteric explanation suggests that Rabbi Simlai
himself understands Gen 1:26 to point to a bifurcation in the godhead. The key
to the real, behind-closed-doors explanation of Gen 1:26 lies in the rabbi’s final
remark:
‫מיכן ואילך בצלמינו כדמותינו לא איש בלא אשה ולא אשה בלא איש ולא שניהם בלא‬
33‫שכינה‬
According to Rabbi Simlai, the divine image is not imprinted on the initial
human being, Adam, androgynous or not, nor on Eve, but rather it is only man-
ifested in the human couple, and more specifically in their procreation, as the
phrase “neither man without woman, nor woman without man” makes clear.
The same phrase also indicates sexual procreation in another interpretation
31 Pace Jacob Neusner, who wonders whether the rabbinic authorities in these passages are
even portrayed positively, given that their real explanations do not seem to respond to the
initial question effectively (Jacob Neusner, Development of a Legend [Leiden: Brill, 1970],
138–139).
32 Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, 126.
33 Tellingly, when the story resurfaces in Deut. Rab. 2:13, the final, esoteric dialogue, the capit-
ulation, is omitted. Yet, the most important manuscripts of all the other versions of the
story have it. See Julius Theodor and Chanock Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabbah: Critical
Edition with Notes and Commentary, 3 vols. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1903–1928), 1.63 (Gen.
Rab. 8:9).
attributed to Rabbi Akiba, the almost heretic of b. Ḥag. 14a, namely that ‫ את‬of
Gen 4:1 means “with the help of” and that human multiplication is impossible
without the Shekinah:
R. Ishmael asked R. Akiba: “Since you have served Nahum of Gimzo for
twenty-two years, [and he taught], Every ak and rak is a limitation, while
every eth and gam is an extension, tell me what is the purpose of the eth
written here [that is, Gen 4:1]?” “If it said, ‘I have gotten a man the Lord,’”
he replied, “it would have been difficult [to interpret]; hence eth [with
the help of] the Lord is required.” Thereupon he quoted to him: “ ‘For it is
no empty thing from you’ (Deut 32:47), and if it is empty, it is so on your
account, because you do not know how to interpret it. Rather, eth the Lord
[teaches this]: In the past, Adam was created from the ground, and Eve
from Adam; but henceforth it shall be, ‘In our image, after our likeness’
(Gen 1:26): neither man without woman nor woman without man, nor
both of them without the Shechinah.”
Gen. Rab. 22:234
Rabbi Akiba’s inherited reading of Gen 1:26 is not exceptional or without con-
text. It ties well with the rabbinic teaching that a celibate life translates into the
diminishing of the divine image: “Some say: He [that is, the celibate] impairs
the divine likeness; thus it is written, ‘For in his image did God make the adam’
(Gen 1:27); and follows, ‘Be fertile, then, and multiply’ (Gen 1:28).”35
34 This and all subsequent texts from the Midrash Rabbah follow the translation in Harry
Freedman and Maurice Simon, eds., Midrash Rabbah, 10 vols. (London: Soncino Press,
1961). Theodor and Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabbah, 1:206.
35 Gen. Rab. 17:2. See also b. Yeb. 62b–63b. Similar statements about the diminishing of the
divine image are only made in relation to murder (cf. b. Yeb. 62b–63b). These principles
are also registered in a sixteenth-century legal code as follows: “Every man is obliged to
marry in order to fulfill the duty of procreation, and whoever is not engaged in propagat-
ing the race is as if he shed blood, diminishing the divine image and causing His Presence
to depart from Israel” (Shulhan Arukh, Even haEzer 1:1). This is not to say that classical
rabbinic Judaism was able to excise traditional celibate tendencies altogether. On the con-
trary, traditions and practices throughout Jewish history suggest that singleness for the
sake of complete dedication to God has been a constant feature, although marginal, in
Judaism, even in rabbinic Judaism. In the Dead Sea community the Damascus Document
(VII 6; XIX 20) implies that at least some members of the community practiced celibacy.
The therapeutae were, according to Philo, celibate “out of an admiration for and love of
wisdom” (De Vita Contemplativa 68). Rabbi Simeon b. Azzai, while condemning celibacy,
spent his life as celibate because his soul “was in love with the Torah” (b. Yeb. 63b). The
Zohar depicts Moses as having to separate himself from Sephorah after being united with
78 bunta
What role does the Shekinah play in the attribution of the image to the
human couple by both Rabbi Simlai and Rabbi Akiba? She is only mentioned at
the very end of the two stories: it is impossible for both man and woman to exist
without the Shekinah. It is tempting to interpret this last succinct statement in
the broadest terms: the Shekinah denotes God’s participation in human procre-
ation. It has also been proposed that the Shekinah forms an androgyny in the
godhead, to reflect the androgyny of the protoplast: like the first human, God is
mixedly male and female.36 However, these interpretations are blatantly non-
contextual when it comes to y. Ber. 12d. In the context of our story, the esoteric
reference to the Shekinah serves the function of an explanation for the plurality
of the divine image; specifically, the pluralistic image is found expressed in the
procreating human couple. Therefore the human couple must mirror a bifur-
cation in the godhead, expressed in this case as God and the Shekinah. It seems
clear that in his esoteric explanation Rabbi Simlai agrees with the heretics that
there is a bifurcation in the divine image in Gen 1:26 (which does literally read
“our image” ‫ )בצלמנו‬and that this plurality is reflected into the human couple.
The feebleness of the refutation of the minim, the driving away stick, might
have been handled by the subconscious.
It is difficult to fit Rabbi Simlai’s concession to the minim into the frames
of either modalism or dualism. On the one hand, he does not suggest at any
point a complete split, conflict, or tension in the binary godhead. On the other,
his esoteric interpretation of Gen 1:26 moves outside the boundaries of modal-
ism. It no longer explains plurals with singulars. It describes the divine in terms
of complementarity. In sharp contrast to the response given to the minim, the
singularity of the divine is not part of Rabbi Simlai’s real answer to his disci-
ples. I would suggest that the Shekinah is chosen to express this vision of the
divine, at once both non-dualist and non-modalist, for her considerable flexi-
bility: while functioning as a companion of God, somewhat independent from
him, she also constitutes one godhead with him. In the terms of Rabbi Simlai’s
analogy, just as Adam’s distinction from Eve does not generate two humanities
or two images, the Shekinah does not double the divine.
the Shekinah (1:21b, 236b, 239a; 2:5b, 245a; 3:4b, 148a, 180a). On this tradition see Scholem,
Major Trends, 226–227; Moshe Idel, “Sexual Metaphors and Praxis in the Kabbalah,” in
David Kraemer, ed., The Jewish Family: Metaphors and Memory (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1989), 179–224 at 206. See also Harvey McArthur, “Celibacy in Judaism at the
Time of Christian Beginnings,” AUSS 25 (1987): 163–181.
36 Lieve Teugels, “The Creation of the Human in Rabbinic Interpretation,” in Gerard P. Lut-
tikhuizen, ed., The Creation of Man and Woman: Interpretations of the Biblical Narratives
in Jewish and Christian Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 107–127 at 111.
3 Rabbi Simlai and the Christian Binitarian Complex
Further evidence that Rabbi Simlai’s reading of Gen 1:26 bifurcates the divine
comes from the unlikeliest of places (since no direct interaction can be pos-
ited): early Christian sources. Several Christian texts oppose readings of Gen
1:26 that are strikingly similar to what I suggest here is the binitarian read-
ing of Rabbi Simlai.37 The following statement of the seventh-century Syrian
bishop Jacob of Edessa38 both places Rabbi Simlai’s bifurcation of the godhead
in clearer focus and provides a wider context for the theological difficulties pre-
sented by Gen 1:26–27:
And that Eve was formed from the rib of Adam and not from the dust
like him is that she not seek nor seize for herself the rulership like him.
And that [she was created] from the rib and not from the head is that she
spend the night deprived of παρρησία and her face be covered like a rib.
And the Lord did not breath a spirit into Eve, not soul from soul was she
born—this time flesh of my flesh—and not soul from soul. And “the two
shall become one flesh,” lest those who are in error consider and say that
the formation of Adam was one thing and that of Eve another and that
there are many gods in the heavens.
Jacob of Edessa, Scholia39
The Syrian writer does not explain how a separate formation of Adam and
respectively Eve would translate into belief in multiple gods, at least two. How-
ever, the argument amounts to a refusal to dissociate the male and the female
within the creative act for such a move would amount at least to ditheism or
binitarianism.
37 Although it is not analyzed here, mention should also be made of the council of Sirmium
(341), which opposed Christians that assumed a plurality of divine beings based on Gen
1:26. On this decision see John Behr, The Nicene Faith (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir Seminar
Press, 2004), 84.
38 On Jacob of Edessa, little known to English-language scholarship until very recently, see
the comprehensive essays in Bas ter Haar Romeny, ed., Jacob of Edessa and the Syriac Cul-
ture of His Day (Leiden: Brill, 2008) and Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim and George Anton
Kiraz, eds., Studies on Jacob of Edessa (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010).
39 MS Harv. Syr. 123, f. 6v, quoted from Edward G. Matthews, The Armenian Commentary on
Genesis Attributed to Ephrem the Syrian, CSCO 573 (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 19, n. 122. On this
text see Dirk Kruisheer, “Reconstructing Jacob of Edessa’s Scholia,” in Judith Frishman and
Lucas van Rompay, eds., The Book of Genesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation:
A Collection of Essays (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 187–196.
80 bunta
The ability of Gen 1:26–27 to suggest a bifurcation in the divine and the exis-
tence of a feminine element in it is even clearer in the following fourth century
Christian text, also attributed to another renowned Syrian of the same city,
Ephrem:
And when it (Scripture) says “[God] took one of [Adam’s] ribs [OR rather,
“sides”] and built it into the form of a woman,” [means] that she would
become the beginning of the world, and that [God] took her out of him
[was] in order to fulfill the word which says, “Male and female he estab-
lished them,” and so that no one think that there was a different creator
for woman.
The Armenian Commentary on Genesis Attributed to Ephrem the Syrian40
The argument is that the creation of Eve from Adam precludes any possible
bifurcation of the protoplast. If the attribution to Ephrem the Syrian is correct,
as the scholarship on the passage argues,41 he would have a clear concept of the
androgyny of the first human and the need to make the above argument would
be more cogent.42
These two Christian passages are also best read against the background of
the ubiquitous early Christian fears of accusations of polytheism.43 As the doc-
trine of the Trinity coalesces in essence-hypostasis language, trinitarian the-
ologians understand the precarious position of their theology in an unsteady
balance between polytheism and modalism. When it comes to these two Syr-
iac texts, their anti-polytheistic argument should also be read more specifically
as against an internal danger: the aforementioned early Syrian feminization of
40 Matthews, The Armenian Commentary, 18–19. Armenian text in idem, The Armenian Com-
mentary on Genesis Attributed to Ephrem the Syrian, CSCO 572 (Leuven: Peeters, 1998),
16.
41 See David D. Bundy, “Ephrem’s Exegesis of Isaiah,” in Elizabeth A. Livingstone, ed., Studia
Patristica 18.4. Papers of the 1983 Oxford Patristic Conference (Kalamazoo/Leuven: Peeters,
1990), 235–236; Edward G. Matthews, “The Armenian Commentary on Genesis Attributed
to Ephrem the Syrian,” in Judith Frishman and Lucas van Rompay, eds., The Book of Gene-
sis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Interpretation: A Collection of Essays (Leuven: Peeters,
1997), 143–161.
42 On Ephrem’s understanding of the first human as androgynous see Murray, Symbols of
Church and Kingdom, 301–303.
43 The early Christian “not three gods” texts are too many to list here. Representative are
Augustine’s common statement “not three gods, but one God” (e.g., De Trinitate I.ix.19,
V.viii.9, VI.ix.10, VIII.1, XV.xvii.28; The Trinity [trans. Edmund Hill; Brooklyn: New City Press,
1991], 79, 195, 212, 241, 419) and Gregory of Nyssa’s treatise On “Not Three Gods.”
the Holy Spirit. As recent scholarship has documented, after the fourth cen-
tury Syrian Christianity tries to expunge thoroughly its previous feminization
of the Holy Spirit. It is telling that the two Syriac sources quoted here leave the
femininity of the “different creator for woman” as merely implied.
It must be pointed out that the exegetical move of Rabbi Simlai does exactly
what these two Christian texts find problematic: it locates humanity’s resem-
blance to God not in the initial, unbifurcated human, androgynous or not,
but in the human couple. The basic theological premise of the two Syrian
sources—the bifurcation of the male and the female within the creative act
would amount to a bifurcation of the godhead—illumines further the binitari-
anism of Rabbi Simlai’s explicit association of the divine image with the human
couple, with Adam and Eve as separate beings.
At this stage of the research it is impossible to determine whether these two
Christian texts counter the interpretation espoused by the minim and by Rabbi
Simlai, that is, whether “those who are in error,” to quote Jacob of Edessa, are
the minim of the rabbis and, indeed, some rabbis themselves, such as Rabbi
Simlai; yet, this must remain for now a distinct possibility. Recent scholarship
has revealed such direct polemics between Syrian theologians and the early
rabbis.44 This is not surprising, given the linguistic, cultural, and geographical
proximity of the two groups. When it comes to Edessa itself, it is estimated
that in the fourth century the Syrian city had a Jewish community that com-
prised between 8 and 12 percent of its population.45 The repeated local Chris-
tian warnings against fraternization with Jews also suggest that at least some
of the Christians there were attracted to Judaism and even influenced by it.46
Several studies have pointed to intriguing parallels specifically between the
Edessan Ephrem and rabbinic literature,47 against which he otherwise polemi-
44 Specifically with regard to debates between Syrian authors and their neighboring rabbis,
see Naomi Koltun-Fromm, “A Jewish-Christian Conversation in Fourth-Century Iran,” JJS
47 (1996): 45–63; eadem, “Aphrahat and the Rabbis on Noah’s Righteousness in Light of
Jewish-Christian Polemics,” in Judith Frishman and Lucas van Rompay, eds., The Book of
Genesis in Jewish and Oriental Christian Traditions (Louvain: Peeters, 1997), 57–71.
45 See Han J.W. Drijvers, “Syrian Christianity and Judaism,” in Judith Lieu et al., eds., The Jews
among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire (London and New York: Routledge,
2013), 124–146 at 138; idem, “Jews and Christians at Edessa,” in Everett Ferguson, ed., Early
Christianity and Judaism (New York: Garland Publishing, 1993), 350–365; idem, “Syrian
Christianity and Judaism,” 124–146 at 90; Bas ter Haar Romeny, “Judaism and the Origins
of Christianity in Edessa: Drijvers’ Reconstruction,” in Huub van de Sandt, ed., Matthew
and the Didache (Asen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2005), 13–33 at 28.
46 Drijvers, “Syrian Christianity and Judaism,” 141.
47 Sebastian Brock, “Jewish Traditions in Syriac Sources,” JJS 30 (1979): 212–232; Tryggve Kron-
82 bunta
cizes fiercely.48 Ephrem also employs language that is strikingly similar to that
of the Palestinian Targums.49 Some of his scriptural quotes even go against the
Peshitta, but agree instead with the Palestinian Targums.50
Regardless, the heretics of our two Edessan authors, for whom the image
of God applies separately to Adam and Eve and thus reflects a bifurcation
in the divine, presumably male-female, are strikingly similar in their reading
of Gen 1:26 to the minim of Rabbi Simlai, and indeed the rabbi himself, who
similarly take the image of God to be reflected in the human couple and to
mirror a male-female bifurcation in the godhead. If “those who are in error”
are not one and the same with the minim and the sympathetic rabbis, their
striking similarity should be viewed as an indicator of a similar exegetical cul-
ture, determined by akin cultural and linguistic milieus, a common textual
heritage, similar exegetical issues and sensitivities to “textual irritants,”51 paral-
lel solutions to these issues, and common interpretive principles. To this shared
Jewish-Christian exegetical ground speak similar interpretive moves attested in
even earlier texts. The Valentinian tradition mentioned in Clement of Alexan-
dria that “the finest emanation of Wisdom is spoken of in ‘He created them in
the image of God, male and female created he them’” probably reflects such
exegetical move.52 It is possible that the imagery in Eph 5:29–32 draws its lan-
guage from such binitarian background:
He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hates his own flesh,
but nourishes and cherishes it, as the Lord does the Church, because we
are members of his body, from his flesh and from his bones. “For this rea-
son a man will leave his father and mother and will cleave to his wife,
holm, Motifs from Genesis 1–11 in the Genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian with Particular
Reference to the Influence of Jewish Exegetical Tradition (Lund: Gleerup, 1978).
48 For a thorough examination of such polemics, see Christine Shepardson, Anti-Judaism
and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem’s Hymns in Fourth-century Syria (Washington DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2008).
49 Sebastian Brock, “A Palestinian Targum Feature in Syriac,” JJS 46 (1995): 271–282.
50 Michael Weitzmann, The Syriac Version of the Old Testament: An Introduction (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), 137–139.
51 See also the perceptive remarks in Burton L. Visotzky, “Jots and Tittles: On Scriptural Inter-
pretation in Rabbinic and Patristic Literatures,”Prooftexts 8 (1988): 257–269. To my knowl-
edge the term “textual irritants,” as a short-hand for textual oddities that elicit special
attention and extraordinary exegetical techniques (nothing short of linguistic acrobat-
ics), was first proposed by James Kugel (see especially his In Potiphar’s House). For more
on this device see Boyarin, Intertextuality; Stern, “Midrash and Indeterminacy,” 132–161.
52 Excerpta ex Theodoto 21.1; text in François Sagnard, ed., Clément d’Alexandrie. Extraits de
Théodote, SC 23 (2nd ed.; Paris: Cerf, 1948), 52–212.
and the two will be one flesh” (Gen 2:24). This is a great mystery, and I
mean in Christ and in the Church.
Eph 5:29–32—my own translation
With the above evidence in mind, the intriguing possibility presents itself that
the emphasis on Gen 2:24 applying to Christ and the Church is a polemic
against binitarian interpretations of the verse. A similar emphasis is found in
2 Clement 14.1–2, which does not explicitly quote Ephesians or Gen 2:24 on this
point. However, 2Clement does associate the pair Christ-Church with the state-
ment in Gen 1:27 that God made humanity as male and female.
4 Conclusions
Based on the Christian evidence presented above it can be safely concluded

that Rabbi Simlai’s minim and Rabbi Simlai in his own right do not read Gen
1:26 in any innovative way. The confrontation in y. Ber. 12d between the rab-
binic authority and the minim suggests that the femininity of the divine was
never fully excised from Judaism, including from the rabbinic mind. At best, the
rabbis seem to have obfuscated this traditional Jewish thought behind closed
doors, veils of esoteric vocabulary, and obscure textual conventions.
Rabbi Simlai’s exegesis of Gen 1:26, in postulating that the divine image is
given to the human couple and not to the initial Adam and therefore reflects
a male-female differentiation in the divine, can now be presented as a prece-
dent to later kabbalistic speculations. Contrary to the opinion expressed by
Scholem and Schäfer and still dominating the field of Jewish mysticism, this
early rabbinic midrash suggests that a binitarian pairing of God to his Shek-
inah circulated at least at the fringes of classical rabbinic theology.
That a God-Shekinah binitarianism would exist in classical rabbinic litera-
ture should not be surprising. Recent scholarship has already noted the diffi-
culty of assuming a circumvention of rabbinic literature in a direct trajectory
between Gnosticism and the Kabbalah. Such circumvention, particularly on
the Shekinah/femininity of God, would stand in sharp contrast to the otherwise
significant continuity between the Kabbalah and the early rabbis on the con-
ception of the godhead. Moreover, several texts indicate the rabbis’ inability,
possibly even unwillingness, to drown out completely non-modalistic theolo-
gies.
I do not wish to suggest here that this rabbinic binitarian interpretation of
Gen 1:26–27 is the only or even the predominant way in which ancient Judaism
read the biblical passage. As the paucity of the sources adduced here indicates,
84 bunta
this interpretation was quite marginal in ancient rabbinic thought. The same
can be said of early Christianity. Arguably, what recent scholarship has repeat-
edly shown, namely that prominent ancient interpreters from both sides of the
increasingly less porous Jewish-Christian borders (such as Philo, Origen, and
Gregory of Nyssa) opposed any attribution of gender to any aspect of the divine
image, is partly to blame for this marginalization.53 Even a greater impact had
the awareness, common in both early Jewish and Christian sources, that cate-
gories of human language can only fail in any portrayals of the divine.
Acknowledgments
In 2009, a second, greatly expanded version of this article was read at Duquesne
University’s symposium on The Reception History of the Bible. I wish to express
my gratitude to all those present at both the Marquette and Duquesne meet-
ings and particularly to their organizers, Professors Andrei Orlov (Marquette),
Bogdan Bucur, and William Wright IV (Duquesne). The understanding of y. Ber.
12d that is advanced here was also presented to Dayton’s Ryterband Symposium
in 2011, in response to a talk given by Prof. Daniel C. Matt. I wish to thank the
coordinator of the symposium, Prof. Mark Verman (Wright State University),
and the main presenter of the meeting, Dr. Matt, for that opportunity and for
the discussions we had afterwards on this interesting rabbinic text. Last but not
least thanks are also due to my graduate assistant during the 2011–2012 year, Mr.
James C. Wykes, who read this paper and offered valuable corrections.
53 See for example Philo, Opif. 76, 137, 151 (the image of God cannot contain any male-female
differentiation); Gregory of Nyssa, In Cant. 7, 11; De Hom. Opif. 16:5–7. It should be noted
that Gregory of Nyssa makes the point that both the negation and the affirmation of any
gender differentiation in the divine do not affect or draw even close to describing the
divine genderlessness. Paradoxically this means that in Gregory’s transcendentalism, as
Sarah Coakley astutely notes, “we are freed up … to speak of God as ‘mother’ ” (“Introduc-
tion,” 10) just as much as we can speak of him as father.
chapter 4
The Nativity of Ben Sira Reconsidered

James R. Russell
It is an honor to dedicate this little paper on the Iranian facets of a strange lit-
tle Hebrew book to his Grace Bp. Alexander Yurevich Golitsin, who in both his
academic work and spiritual life has cast great light on some Jewish sources
of the contemplative traditions that swelled into the mighty river of Russian
Orthodox spirituality, which in turn irrigated the roots of Hasidism; one also
humbly offers homage to a scion of a princely family who have for centuries
served the Great Russian state and nation with self-sacrifice, zeal, and glory.
While working recently on a paper that considers the similarity of Esperanto
and Modern Hebrew as both Plansprachen and “Jewish” languages, one had
occasion to review the case of a planned a priori language whose purpose, the
Creation of the universe, would afford it consideration as an early example.
It is described in the Sefer Yeṣira1 (“Book of Creation,” perhaps composed as
early as the third century CE) and was studied by Prof. Joseph Dan in an arti-
cle that I first heard when he delivered it as a lecture at Columbia University
in New York in 1992.2 That lecture, a thrilling experience, marked the begin-
ning of a long friendship with one of the great scholars of Judaism of our time.
Prof. Dan stressed the anomalous, nearly context-less features of Sefer Yeṣira.
It does not suggest that history has a meaning or purpose, it says nothing of
Israel or the Commandments, and it regards good and evil as mere dimensions.
The very concise text is in two parts: in one, language is generated through
two rotating wheels of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet that throw off
the 231 possible binary combinations of these to form biliteral roots. These are
arbitrary—the question one encounters in natural language of the relation of
signifier to signified does not exist. The other part concerns the ten Sefirot: these
are units of quality or energy that form a pattern which is the template of exis-
tence. The unknown author invented the term sefira, most likely from the same
Hebrew root that produces mispar (“number”) and indeed the word sefer itself.
One has since proposed, in a study of Armenian letter and number magic and
1 Peter Hayman, Sefer Yeṣira: Edition, Translation and Text-Critical Commentary, TSAJ 104 (Tüb-
2 Joseph Dan, “The Language of Creation and Its Grammar,” in idem, ed., Jewish Mysticism, Late
Antiquity (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1998), 129–154.

86 russell
mysticism, that the Hebrew neologism might have been intended to resemble
Greek sphaira, “sphere.”3 The Sefer Yeṣira, though it later was to become the
proof text of Jewish mysticism, is an isolate—there is nothing else like it. At
the time of Prof. Dan’s lecture I proposed to him that the theories of language
and of shape or pattern that are so exotic in a Jewish text would be wholly unex-
ceptional in contemporary India, a civilization in contact with the cultures of
both Parthia and Rome, where the developed (and complementary) theories
of mantra and yantra were already commonplace. One recommended to him
A. Padoux’s study, Vac, which is footnoted in his published study. But he did not
pursue that line of inquiry further. Indeed on present evidence it is not possi-
ble to suggest a direct connection and borrowing, in the absence of any clearly
Sanskritic reference.
It seems, nonetheless, methodologically sound to propose that when ideas
and practices that are ordinary in India or Iran emerge in startling isolation
from any other known context in Jewish texts, at a time when cultural con-
tacts with the two great civilizations to the east of the Roman Near East were
commonplace, it is reasonable to suggest they might have sparked the fur-
ther development of nascent themes that would otherwise perhaps not have
advanced very far. One encounters at times the dismissal of such research in
the history of ideas as “essentialism” or “influence-hunting”; but this militates
against the reality of cultural interchange, and thus against the process and
development of thought. In Deutero-Isaiah, who hails the Persian Achaemenid
king Cyrus as a messiah, one finds a consideration and rejection of dualism in
rhetoric that reflects a familiarity, perhaps via an oral intermediary, with the
Gathas of Zarathustra, in particular with the “holy questions” of the Prophet.
The subsequent evolution in the Intertestamental period in Israel of concepts
of an independent and wholly malign Satan, and of heaven and hell—beliefs
3 See Appendix II, “Mashtotsʽ the Magician,” to James R. Russell, “On an Armenian Magi-
cal Manuscript: New York, Jewish Theological Seminary, Ms 10558,” Proceedings of the Israel
Academy of Sciences 8 (2002–2014) (Jerusalem, 2015), 121–208. It is interesting in retrospect
that the ancients chose to ascribe great mystical and cosmological significance precisely to
the sphere, given the celebrated conjecture in topology of the mathematician Henri Poincaré,
propounded at the beginning of the 20th century, that “every closed three-dimensional man-
ifold that is homotopy-equivalent to a three-dimensional sphere is, in fact, a sphere” that is,
that such a three-dimensional sphere is the only kind of bounded three-dimensional object
that has no holes in it: see Amir D. Aczel, A Strange Wilderness: The Lives of the Great Math-
ematicians (New York: Sterling, 2011), 239–240. The conjecture was proven in 2003 by the
Russian Jewish mathematician Grigorii Perelman, who lives in St. Petersburg. See Masha
Gessen, Perfect Rigor: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 2009).
the nativity of ben sira reconsidered 87
that found a stronger foothold in the offshoots of Judaism, Islam and Christian-
ity, than they did in the older parent faith, where they proved to be in the main
a passing fancy—should likewise be considered in the light of the Zoroastrian-
ism of the Parthian Arsacids, whose popularity among the Jews in the Roman
period aroused messianic hopes of liberation.
This appreciation of the influence of a significant Iranian element in the
formation of Judaism was respectable in scholarship of the late nineteenth cen-
tury but later fell into disrepute when it came to be stained, thanks to German
Iranists and other academics who promoted actively the racialist fantasies of
“Aryan” superiority of the Nazi era. Scholarship of the postwar era, partly in
consequence of this, but partly also because of new academic fashions and a
diminution of interest in the demanding study of Iranian philology, tended to
stress Iranica less than before, and the study of Zoroastrian Iran receded from
the center of the study of antiquity. A new sort of academic totalitarianism,
this time on the left rather than the right, that enforces an orthodoxy of post-
colonialism, political correctness, and so on, now imposes upon scholars, at
the risk of marginalization of worse, the unfounded assumption that cultural
exchange presupposes that one culture is to be regarded as superior to another,
with the consequence that borrowing belittles the recipient. However the salu-
tary growth of Irano-Judaica and in particular Irano-Talmudica in Jewish stud-
ies, particularly in Israel, where the neo-Puritan left-orthodoxy of American
academia has not yet taken hold everywhere, offers some hope for the future
and the assurance that intellectual integrity may endure. So one would seek to
entertain the strong possibility that an Indian inspiration, a catalyst, underlies
the ur-text of Kabbalah; and to approach the subject of the present essay in the
same methodological spirit, with respect to a Zoroastrian inspiration behind
the perplexing Alphabet of Ben Sira.
The Sefer Yeṣira seems to have languished in obscurity for some centuries
(the Talmud ignores it or is unaware of it), while the visionary texts and prac-
tices of the Maʿaseh Merkavah and the Hekhalot (the Divine Chariot and the
Heavenly Palaces) were evolving.4 But whatever the unattested reception of
the earlier text in the intervening time might have been, the book emerged
from the shadows into prominence in the post-Geonic period, as Jewish mystics
widened their concern with the cosmological Maʿaseh Bereshit. One particular
4 One has indeed proposed that Iranian designations and architectural visions of the other-
world inspired aspects of a Hekhalot text: see James R. Russell, “Iranian in the Hekhalot,” in
Matteo Compareti, ed., Fabulous Creatures and Spirits in Ancient Iranian Culture (Bologna:
Casa Editrice Persiani, 2018), 93–110.
88 russell
group that Joseph Dan has studied in detail,5 the “Unique Cherub” circle among
the Pious ones of Germany, the Ḥasidei Ashkenaz, twelfth century, employed
the Sefer Yeṣira as well another text that is likewise enigmatic, and seems to
be so in very similar ways. It was long ago considered partly in an Iranian con-
text,6 but that approach was subsequently forgotten, downplayed, or rejected
outright—perhaps due to the impact of the trends surveyed above. However
in view of additional evidence that approach merits revisiting. This text is the
Alef-Bet de-Ben Sira, the “Alphabet of Ben Sira,” in spirit a work without piety,
at times bleakly cynical, and also trenchantly parodic.7 Like Sefer Yeṣira, it is a
peculiarly context-less and anomalous work, at odds with the values and beliefs
one might associate with the mainstream Judaism of its era. The text in Dan’s
view is probably to be dated to the Geonic period; and the locus of its compo-
sition was likely, depending on one’s point of view, to have been a place one
might call either early Islamic Iraq or post-Sasanian Mesopotamia (or both).
The text is called an alphabet because of the alphabetically arranged apho-
risms in Hebrew and Aramaic attributed to the prodigy Ben Sira. This is the
Jesus ben Sira of Ecclesiasticus, but his given name is for some reason not used,
and as might indeed be expected in a pseudepigraphon he differs considerably
from his namesake in the Apocrypha. At birth, Ben Sira wins a contest with
a teacher (an act of lèse majesté the Talmud considers worthy of death, but a
commonplace of folklore) and predicts that he, Ben Sira, will compose a diffi-
cult book people will want to destroy. The principal concern of the text is the
conviction that death is purely evil, though normative Judaism, for all its hope
in resurrection of the dead (one of the thirteen points of the later creed of Mai-
monides) accepts death as part of the purposes of an all-powerful God, though
it mitigates this reality with the conviction that there is a world to come with
its rewards. The author has compiled from various Talmudic and Midrashic
sources a list of people (and one bird, Milcham) who have escaped death: many
of them are obscure and as Prof. Dan points out,8 it is a seemingly random and
haphazard assembly of figures that achieves immortality, but not by dint of any
5 See Joseph Dan, The “Unique Cherub” Circle: A School of Mystics and Esoterics in Medieval Ger-
many, TSMEMJ 15 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999).
6 Israël Lévi, “La Nativité de Ben Sira,”REJ 29 (1894): 197–205, to be more fully appreciated infra.
7 ʿEli Yassif, The Tales of Ben Sira in the Middle Ages: A Critical Text and Literary Study (Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 1984) [Hebrew].
8 Dan, The “Unique Cherub” Circle, 26–27. The bird may be compared perhaps to the Phoenix,
except that the latter does die, only to be resurrected. An immortal eagle-like bird of com-
posite features, Avestan Saēnō.mǝrǝγa, Middle Persian Sēnmurw, New Persian Sīmorgh, who
occupies a prominent place in Iranian heroic epic, mythology, and magic, is a more likely
candidate for the model the author of the text might have considered.
apparent merit. That is, immortality was not a reward, they merely managed to
evade something that the text takes for granted as manifestly bad.
This bizarre narrative would be far less remarkable in a Zoroastrian context.
The ancient religion of the Iranians is dualistic: the evil spirit Angra Mainyu,
not the good Creator God Ahura Mazda, is the author of all darkness, lying,
disease, and above all death. Escaping death, then, is not necessarily a divine
gift. In the Pahlavi Ayādgār ī Zarērān (“Memorial of Zarēr”), which I have
argued might have been the crucial, climactic episode of a longer Parthian epic
cycle—an Iranian parallel to the Bhagavad Gītā—king Vīštāsp, the first ruler
to accept the new revelation of the Prophet Zarathustra, is given a choice. He
can either fight bravely the enemies of the newly-revealed Zoroastrian faith,
thereby assuring its continuation but dooming himself and his beloved brother
to death (Zarēr, on the battlefield; the king, in some unspecified way, and
indeed he was to be the last of the Kayanian line), or choose immortality in
a fortress of bronze, in which case the ultimate outcome of the cosmic bat-
tle between good and evil is uncertain. It is very much a dualist reflex of the
moment of decision for the hero Arjuna in the parallel Indian epic.9 The king
chooses to fight, accepting death for the sake of a greater good but not thereby
justifying death itself as in any way natural; and one recalls that Zarathustra
himself fell at the hands of an assassin, that incident also underscoring the
inherent wickedness of human mortality.
The Shangri La-like magic enclosure of metal that was offered as a refuge of
immortality to the Kayanian heroes seems to have been borrowed from Sasa-
nian Persian into the Muslim cycle of stories A Thousand Nights and a Night, but
the only eternal life in the City of Brass is the mechanical animation of metal-
lic robot-guards. It has been transformed, as would be proper to the ideology of
Islam, into a pious object lesson on the vanity of human ambition.10 Death, the
Prophet Mohammed is supposed to have said, is the only sermon you need.
In Zoroastrian apocalyptic and later Persian heroic literature there is a para-
disiacal fortress called Gang or Kang diz (“fortress”), Avestan Kangha, where
various legendary heroes (but, as we have seen, by no means all) enjoy uninter-
rupted bliss, waiting to be summoned for the last battle at the end of days.11 It
9 See James R. Russell, “A Parthian Bhagavad Gita and its Echoes,” in Jean-Pierre Mahé
and Robert W. Thomson, eds., From Byzantium to Iran: In Honour of Prof. Nina Garsoian
(Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996), 17–35 at 20.
10 See James R. Russell, “The Tale of the Bronze City in Armenian,” in Thomson Samuelian
and Michael E. Stone, eds., Medieval Armenian Culture, University of Pennsylvania Arme-
nian Texts and Studies 6 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), 250–261.
11 See Mary Boyce, “On the Antiquity of Zoroastrian Apocalyptic,” BSOAS 47.1 (1984), 57–75
90 russell
is thus for some a legitimate, strategic retreat; but for others a place to which
only a coward would fly. And for still others, Shangri La is just a lucky escape.
Kangdiz is a prominent feature of the Zoroastrian apocalyptic and epic imag-
ination that enjoyed a long afterlife in Persian epic and Islamic storytelling. It
is a place of which the anonymous author of Ben Sira could well have heard,
living exactly when and where the tale of it would have been best known, and
transmitted, and become most varied in its interpretation by diverse cultures
with diverging views on mortality. He would then have fitted it into his narra-
tive in such a way as parodically to illustrate its incongruity in respect to the
Rabbinic Jewish tradition to which he belonged, and in which he was so well
versed. (Rabbinic tradition adeptly co-opted the text anyhow, but that proce-
dure is not the present concern of this essay and has been adequately studied
by others.)
In another episode, Ben Sira answers a question put to him by Nebuchadnez-
zar, “Why did the earth receive the right to gobble up and swallow the whole
world?” He explains that God could have made man out of heavenly material,
but instead borrowed our clay from the earth and was obliged to repay the debt
with our corpses at death. Dan points out that the story deprives death of any
mitigating connection with divine justice, and offers no hope of resurrection.12
The earth merely swallows us. There is at least some scriptural foundation
for this grim forecast, given the character of Biblical evocations of Sheol and
the famous verse Lo ha-mētīm yehallelū Yāh, we-lo kol yōrdēi dūmāh “The dead
will not praise God, nor all who descend into the silence” (Ps 115:17).13 Where
Judaism has expanded its understanding of the afterworld, there may have
been a Persian catalyst or inspiration. But in the case of Ben Sira’s strange tale,
one might note that the image of Mother Earth—Russian Мать Сыра Земля,
etc.—as the powerful taker of the dead is commonplace in Indo-European
mythology in a way that it is not in the Semitic lore of Abrahamic believers.
and James R. Russell, “The Interrupted Feast,” in Bernard Outtier, Cornelia B. Horn, Basil
Lourié, and Alexey Ostrovsky, eds. Armenia between Byzantium and the Orient: Celebrating
the Memory of Karen Yuzbashian (1927–2009) (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
12 Dan, The “Unique Cherub” Circle, 24–25. The idea of a human tragedy as not at all a great
moral dilemma but merely the result of a mere contract or conversation between God and
another being is not unique, to be sure, in Biblical literature. All Job’s travails are the result
of a wager our Lord makes with Satan—as the reader knows but the suffering hero does
not, as his faith is tested to the limit.
13 The Psalm continues and concludes, “But we will bless the Lord, from now until evermore,
Halleluyah!” Even so, what does the preceding verse say of an afterlife? The pious, Hasidic
explanation that I have heard is that many who appear to be alive and among us are spir-
itually the dead, in the depths of silence, and indeed do not praise God.
In Iran and contiguous cultures from Armenia in the west to Khotan in the
east, the Zoroastrian Amǝša Spǝnta (“Holy Immortal,” a being somewhat like an
archangel, in charge of both a moral quality and the corresponding creation)
Spǝntā Ārmaitī (“Holy Devotion,” mistress of the earth) is not just the lovely
goddess of Zarathustra’s vision but retains also the aspect of earth the devourer
of bodies, the powerful abode of the dead. The Armenian S(p)andaramet, an
Iranian loan and a supernatural being that has very much the latter character
in folklore,14 would well play the role of Ben Sira’s animated Earth.
We may now address the much-discussed episode that is the principal focus
of the present essay: the birth of Ben Sira as described in the text. His father, the
Prophet Jeremiah, came to bathe in a public bathhouse and found a number
of “the evil men of Ephraim” committing onanism there, that is, masturbat-
ing. They threatened to rape him (to commit the sin of Sodom) if he did not
join them. He therefore ejaculated into the water, his virgin daughter came to
bathe there later on, and she was impregnated by her father’s semen. The young
woman gave birth nine months later, in the way of nature but at the same time
miraculously—for the little boy who emerged from her womb was fully formed
and articulate. The name the boy chose for himself, Ben Sira, which is equiva-
lent by gematria to that of Jeremiah but still hides the latter, highlights the fact
that he is the offspring of an incestuous union. This circumstance is best con-
cealed from the world, as he precociously explains to his mother. David Stern
considers the story in the light of the genre of parody, a form seldom encoun-
tered in ancient Jewish literature. In particular, it satirizes Pesikta Rabbati on
Jer 1:1, for both that text and the narrative contain the word yeṣirah; and cites
also b. Ḥag. 14b–15a, where it is mentioned that a virgin can become pregnant
through semen preserved in bath water. Stern notes also that Lot cohabited
incestuously with his daughters.15 The tractate Ḥagigah 14b–15a of the Babylo-
nian Talmud in a pericope on Ben Zoma considers the way a virgin may become
pregnant in a bathtub, in the context of a larger discussion of Creation and the
Divine Chariot. It is possible that the discussion has to do with the virgin birth
of Jesus Christ, who as a youth also defeated Rabbis in argument; and the birth
of Ben Sira would be a parody of the same. One has noted that the name Jesus
14 See James R. Russell, Zoroastrianism in Armenia, HIS 5 (Cambridge, MA, 1987), chapter 10
(“Spandaramet-sandaramet”), pp. 323–359. Spandaramet, from NW Middle Iranian, is the
Mazdean goddess, likened to Dionysus; but Sandaramet, apparently from an older, SW Ira-
nian loan, is purely chthonic: in later medieval lore, her name contracts to produce evil
subterranean beings, sandark‘.
15 David Stern, “The Alphabet of Ben Sira and the Early History of Parody in Jewish Litera-
ture,” in Hindy Najman and Judith Newman, eds., The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays
in Honor of James L. Kugel, JSJSS 83 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 423–448 at 435–438.
92 russell
is omitted in the text, perhaps out of distaste for Christianity, which when the
Ecclesiasticus was composed had not yet come into existence.
Prof. Stern’s insight is doubtless correct and supports his contention that
this is a Rabbinic parody. But it is also possible—without detracting from the
parodic character of the text—that the Ben Sira episode does a sort of double
duty here, by alluding also the Zoroastrian legend of the birth of the Savior.
That legend would have been commonly known to Persians in Iraq and to
Jews who rubbed shoulders with them. In that narrative, Zarathustra’s seed
is conveyed by the messenger god Nairyō.sangha to lake Kąsaoya (identified
by tradition with Hāmūn-e Seistān, in the southeast of present-day Iran) and
towards the end of days a virgin will bathe there, become pregnant, and give
birth to the Saošyant, Astvat.ǝrǝta. The legend pervades the Zoroastrian sacred
literature (Yašt 19.92, Greater Bundahišn 33.36–38, 35.56–60, Dēnkard 7.10.15–
19) and was known in the eighth century to Theodore bar Kōnai, who reports
in his Book of Scholia in Syriac that Zarathustra sat by an ʿeina de-maya, a
spring of water, and told his disciples Gushtasp (i.e., Vishtaspa, mentioned
above), Sasan (a common name in Parthian as well as Middle Persian but still
an anachronism, unless its original meaning, “protector”, is employed as the
epithet of an unnamed patron) and Meheman (this would be his early disciple
Maidhyō.mangha, literally, “Half-moon”) that around the end of time a virgin
was to conceive. He then packed them off to Bethlehem.16 The story neatly
conflates two virgin births and accounts besides for the journey of the Magi.
Israël Lévi back in 1894 already proposed the similarity of the birth of Ben
Sira to that of the Zoroastrian eschatological Savior, and noted that in Chris-
tian and Islamic tradition the Prophet Zoroaster was believed to have been
a disciple of the Prophet Jeremiah (Ben Sira’s father). He suggested the story
might have come to the Jewish author through a Muslim intermediary, perhaps
from an Arabic text that ridiculed Zoroaster in the manner that the Tōledōt
Yešūʿ parodied Jesus. Importantly, Lévi stressed the centrality of Persians to
the intellectual milieu of Iraq in the early Islamic period, noting such relevant
translations as Ibn Muqaffa’s of the cycle of animal fables Kalila wa Dimna. He
concludes, “Notre roman serait la dernière étape d’ un mythe religieux devenu
simple conte amusant sous la plume d’un écrivain éclectique de mauvais gout.
Cette dernière aventure n’est pas rare: c’est la destinée de beaucoup de leg-
16 See Tal Ilan and Reuven Kiperwasser, “Virginity and Water: Between the Babylonian Tal-
mud and Iranian Myth,” in Almut Hintze, Desmond Durkin, and Claudius Naumann, eds.,
A Thousand Judgements. Festschrift for Maria Macuch (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2019),
193–208.
ends sacrées.”17 And then, he might have added with reference to the use of the
text in medieval Ashkenaz by the Unique Cherub Circle of Jewish pietists and
mystics, it returned again to sacred legend, among readers who could no longer
understand it in any other way (and would not want to).
In their learned study of virgin birth from water, Tal Ilan and Reuven Kiper-
wasser carefully and exhaustively document the Talmudic and Zoroastrian
material but conclude that Ben Sira is beholden to the former, not the latter.
Considering that the telltale mention of the sin of Sodom would in their view
betray European, not Middle Eastern authorship, they disagree with the con-
clusion of the most recent editor of the Alphabet of Ben Sira, Eli Yassif,18 that it
emerged in post-Sasanian Iraq. However certain additional factors should be
taken into consideration, and these, in my view, would support strongly an
Iranian milieu and vindicate Lévi’s judgment of nearly a century and a quar-
ter ago. Here is the first factor. The Virgin Mary, and the lady in the Talmudic
bathtub, are not the next-of-kin of the child’s father, but Ben Sira’s mother is
Jeremiah’s daughter and, as we have seen, the hero in the text highlights that
incestuous relationship by concealing his father’s name in a numerical code.
Incest, though attested in the Bible, is scandalous to normative Judaism, Chris-
tianity, and Islam (and, indeed, to present-day Parsi and Irani Zoroastrians,
though their recent ancestors still practiced it). But in the Zoroastrian scrip-
ture itself, it is one of the cardinal virtues, called in Avestan xvaētvadāθa- and
in Pahlavi xwēdōdāh. It is mentioned in the Frāvarānē, the Credo, that Zoroas-
trians recite whenever they tie the sacred girdle—at least thrice daily. Marrying
one’s mother, sister, or daughter is even recommended as a means of expiat-
ing a sin. The birth of Ben Sira is a parody—so what, if not Zoroastrian legend
and custom, is the text here parodying? Moreover, the men whom Jeremiah
meets threaten anally to rape him unless he joins them in their circle-jerk (if
the gentle reader will pardon the Americanism, but we are dealing here with
the most vulgar kind of satire). Pahlavi Kunmarz, homosexual anal intercourse,
is a perennial topic of humor in the Classical Persian literature that began in the
early Islamic period—in a parody of the Šāh-nāme the archetypal hero Rostam
boasts of his feats of athletic buggery, and Herodotus wryly noted long before
that the Persians learned pederasty from the Greeks but came to excel in it. But
in the Zoroastrian texts, whose concern is procreation and the prolongation
of the family line, in opposition to the evils of infertility and extinction, it is
regarded as the worst of all possible sins, the one for which there is no possibil-
17 Lévi, “La Nativité de Ben Sira,” 205.

18 ʿEli Yassif, Sippurei Ben Sira bi-yemei ha-beinayyim (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984).
94 russell
ity of expiation, the one for which the death penalty may be imposed without
intervening legal procedure. Perhaps they protest too much: then, as now, it
was a large part of human sexuality.
And consider too, a second additional factor that can argue for Iranian ori-
gins. This is the setting of the whole episode: not a bathtub, but a public bath-
house. Jews and Muslims enjoy the mikveh and hammam; but as we learn from
a responsum of the priest Emēd ī Ašawahištān that undoubtedly addresses con-
ditions after the Muslim conquest, the garmābag (lit. “(place of) warm water,”
i.e., bathhouse) of the akdēnān (“those of evil religion,” i.e., Muslims) is strictly
forbidden to Zoroastrians no matter what their reason for wanting or need-
ing to use it, because there is no rule in Islam that protects water and fire from
impurity (hixr, “excrement,” and nasā, “dead matter”—a term that includes any
bodily discharge). The author of the responsum notes that andar huxwadāyīh
(“in the time of good rule,” i.e., the Sasanian period) it was common for bath-
houses to be located near the fire temples—at that time, presumably, laws of
religious hygiene were observed. And indeed Zoroastrians must wash before
prayer, using even sand if nothing else is available (this and perhaps Jewish rit-
uals of hand-washing were perhaps the source of the same Muslim rule).19 If
the author of the Alphabet of Ben Sira was indeed parodying a Zoroastrian leg-
end, then this episode may lewdly suggest that the semen in lake Hamun was no
less repulsive in the sight of the law of the Mazdeans themselves than the water
of a Turkish bath in which grown men have been toying with themselves. If the
satire extends as well to the Christian virgin birth, tant pis—but nobody ever
claimed that the Blessed Virgin Mary became of child through taking a bath.20
Insemination in the water of a virgin destined to give birth to an important per-
son is a topos that is not limited in any case to strictly Zoroastrian mythology:
it is found in two epic cycles of the Iranian world as well, so it would take some
special pleading for a Persian tale, however it may have been transmitted, not
to have been the source of Ben Sira.
In the Armenian epic cycle of Sasun, the lady Covinar steps into lake Van,
drinks one and a half handfuls of a milky liquid spurting from a tumescent rock
in the water, and nine months later gives birth to twins, one of whom is shorter
than the other. In the Ossetic epic of the Narts, a shepherd sees the naked lady
19 Nezhat Safa-Isfehani, Rivāyat-i Hēmīt-i Ašawahištān: A Study in Zoroastrian Law, HIS 2

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 145–148.
20 And there is a hilarious satire, most definitely from Europe, of the Christian virgin birth.
In the Decameron of Boccaccio, two corrupt monks travel around the Italian countryside
charging gullible rustic oafs good money to see a parrot feather that they claim fell off the
angel Gabriel’s wing while he was lustily “annunciating” Mary. No bathhouse here.
Satana washing clothes in the river Terek: she sees him and hides behind a rock,
he ejaculates, the semen hits the rock, and a hero is born from there. Armenian
folklore is rich in milky fountains; and imagery of this kind may well go back in
Anatolia to the Hittite era. But the epic of Sasun crystallized around the ninth
century, with the Armenians’ enemies the “idolatrous” Arabs of Misr, “Egypt”
(by which they meant the Caliphate to the south, with its center in Iraq). Thus
the story was current around the same time that the satire of the nativity of
Ben Sira took shape.21
Where might the author of Ben Sira have heard and traded witty, learned
tales? One setting could have been a gathering of other learned Jews. In his
study of Ben Sira, Stern cites, importantly if perhaps somewhat anachronis-
tically, the testimony of the Rambam (Moses Maimonides, 1135–1204), who
reported that the Rabbis when they tired of their studying (garsayhū) would
speak among themselves words of amusement (mīlēi de-vdīḥūtāʾ).22 It is cer-
tainly possible that some of the Amoraim and Geonim did likewise, in earlier
ages. In Geonic Iraq the mutakallimun (“discoursers”) of Judaism, Islam, and
Christianity met each other in majālis (lit. “sessions,” i.e., social gatherings; the
Arabic word is now used also to mean a parliament) to seek answers in their
various faiths to the questions posed by Greek philosophy.23 The Persian poet
Ḥāfez in an ode encourages his friends, Majles-e ’ons ast, ghazal khwān ō sorūd,
“It is a gathering of intimate friends; sing odes and play music.” Participants
in such gatherings often drank wine, and conversation was free indeed. If one
considers the writings of ʿObeid-e Zākānī, the bounds of satire were liberal
and lewdness was a commonplace weapon of wit. In the later syncretic Dīn-
i Ilāhī (“Religion of the Divine”) sponsored by the Mughal emperor Akbar, the
only structure that might be compared to a temple was a beautifully designed
majlis at Fatehpur Sikri near Delhi—a seminar room for the wise men of the
religions of the empire. In the Iraq of the Geonic period, there was ample
room for the expression of diverse religious views: Šahrastānī (1076–1153) wrote
on the beliefs of Magians (i.e., Zoroastrians), Jews, Christians, Muslims, secu-
lar philosophers, Sabaeans, Manichaeans, worshippers of stars and idols, and
Brahmins (Hindus). Moreover, he claims that the Magians had 70 sects; the
21 On the Armenian and Alan epics see James R. Russell, “Argawan: The Indo-European
Memory of the Caucasus,” Nartamongae 13:1–2 (2018): 151–187.
22 Stern, “The Alphabet of Ben Sira and the Early History of Parody in Jewish Literature,” 448,
n. 50.
23 Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 285.
96 russell
Jews, 71; the Christians, 72; and the Muslims, 73.24 This seems hyperbolic, but
one might at least suggest that each religion had many divisions; and the more
adherents it enjoyed, the more divisions there were. Abū Manṣūr al-Ghazālī
(1058–1111) had argued against a plethora of religious and irreligious opponents,
including dahrīyūn (materialists or fatalists, for whom the Iranian designa-
tion of the Manichaeans, zandīg, Arabic pl. zanādiqah, “(false) interpreter,” was
also employed) and ṭabīʿīyūn (“naturalists” who denied the future life and the
rewards and punishments there).25 One imagines the author of the Alphabet of
Ben Sira would have found congenial company in such a motley crew of imagi-
native and garrulous savants ready to deploy every literary strategy available to
argue with an opponent, or just have some fun at his expense.
Humor was common in the early Islamic world and Central Asia.26 I do not
know why the devout Jews of the mystic circle of the Unique Cherub apparently
failed to understand that a text they regarded with reverence was a parody, at
times cynical and nihilistic—a grand joke. At least two texts securely within
the Biblical canon express a cynicism that pious commentators have either
adroitly circumvented or failed to notice: these are Job and Ecclesiastes. The
presence of these in the canon might argue for the existence, indeed, of a cold
undercurrent—not to mix metaphors—of cynicism deep within the warmer
mainstream of the thought of Israel. Perhaps they were not equipped with an
awareness of the very existence of the genre that would enable them to receive
and perceive it. Jorge Luis Borges (no stranger to parody, satire, obscure sects,
and the world of early Islam) in a short story illustrates such a predicament:
the learned Ibn Rushd—Averroes—is in his library, trying to figure out what
Aristotle meant by “comedy.” Outside in the courtyard below, three boys are
clowning about: one of them, standing on the shoulders of another, is acting
like a muezzin, which the third plays a worshipper. Ibn-Rushd is barely annoyed
by the distraction of the silly boys—a performance of comedy, which, had he
but known how to see and hear, would have served as a living answer to his
question—and returns to the solemn, humorless study of his scholarly books.27
24 A.K. Kazi and J.G. Flynn, eds., Muḥammad bin ʿAbd al-Karīm Shahrastānī, Muslim Sects
and Divisions (The Section on Muslim Sects in Kitāb al-Milal wa’l-Niḥal) (London: Kegan
Paul, 1984), 9, 31.
25 W. Montgomery Watt, The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazālī (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1953), 30.
26 See Holly Adams, “Clowns on the Silk Road,” in Ken Parry, ed., Art, Architecture and Reli-
gion Along the Silk Roads, Silk Road Studies 12 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 221–232.
27 Jorge Luis Borges, “Averroës’ Search,” in Andrew Hurley, ed., Jorge Luis Borges. Collected
Fictions (New York: Viking, 1998), 235–241 at 236.
part 2
Theophany and Transformation
∵
chapter 5
Historical Memory and the Eschatological Vision of

God’s Glory in Irenaeus
Khaled Anatolios
The two most prominent themes in scholarly treatments of Irenaeus’s escha-

tology are, first, his anti-gnostic insistence on the salvation and glorification
of the flesh—salus carnis—and, second, his millenarianism, the belief that
the consummation of the present phase of history will bring about an earthly
kingdom which the righteous will inherit, and in which they will become pre-
pared for the fullness of assimilation to the divine nature.1 Almost altogether
missing from these scholarly treatments is the recognition that Irenaeus con-
ceived of humanity’s historical memory as intrinsic to and, at least to some
extent, constitutive of the eschatological vision of divine glory.2 This Irenaean
motif anticipates a pervasive stress in modern theological treatments of escha-
tology on the persistence of historical memory in eternity. Exemplifying this
modern theme, Romano Guardini writes that in eschatological eternity, a per-
son’s “history is included in the present, and all the successive moments of [his]
past exist in an absolute now …. There must also be present his joys, sorrows,
frustrations, liberations, victories, defeats, his love and his hatred … for the res-
urrection of the body means the resurrection of the life that has been lived,
with all its good and evil …. Nothing that has been is annihilated. Man’s deeds
and his destiny are a part of him, and, set free from the restrictions of history,
will remain for all eternity ….”3
1 On Irenaeus’s eschatology as centered on the theme of salus carnis, see especially Basil Studer,
Trinity and Incarnation: The Faith of the Early Church (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press,
1993), 56–64; Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001),
229ff.; Ysabel de Andia, Homo Vivens. Incorruptibilité et divinization de l’ homme selon Irénée
de Lyon (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1986), 333–343. For a succinct but synthetic account of
Irenaeus’s eschatology, which attends to both the themes of salus carnis and millenarianism,
see Brian Daley, The Hope of the Early Church. A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 28–32.
2 By way of slight exception, Brian Daley does mention in passing that, for Irenaeus, “our souls
… will retain the ‘form’ of their body and memory of their existence on earth, but not its
fleshly substance.” (Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, 30). However, Daley does not focus
on how the memory of historical existence is intrinsic to the eschatological vision of divine
glory, which is the subject of the present essay.
3 Romano Guardini, The Last Things: Concerning Death, Purification after Death, Resurrection,

100 anatolios
Notwithstanding Irenaeus’s affinity with the modern emphasis on the eter-

nal persistence of human history, his treatment of this theme has its own
distinctive character and needs to be interpreted within the native context
of his unique theological vision. Only when we have done this work of con-
textual interpretation can we properly ascertain the unique contribution that
Irenaeus can make to the modern discussion of the question of the relation
between history and eternity. In this essay, I will offer such a contextual inter-
pretation by first demonstrating that Irenaeus does indeed speak of humanity’s
recollection of its historical experience as integral to its eschatological vision
of divine glory and that this theme, though fleetingly expressed, is in organic
continuity with the major axes of his theology. Secondly, I will provide evi-
dence that despite the seemingly offhand and sporadic appearances of such
passages, they are entirely consistent and indeed intertwined with at least three
of Irenaeus’s pervasive thematic preoccupations: the irreducible difference and
positive relation between God and creation; the knowledge of God manifest in
human history; and the mutually related glories of God and humanity. In con-
clusion, I will offer some brief reflections on what I consider to be Irenaeus’s
distinctive contribution to modern discussions of the relation between history
and eschatology.
1 Two Irenaean Passages Indicating the Persistence of Historical

Memory in the Eschatological Vision of God
A paradigmatic passage in which Irenaeus lays out the implicit logic for his
assumption that that the remembrance of humanity’s historical experience
will persist in the condition of eschatological glorification can be found in
Book 3, chapter 20, of Against the Heresies. Here, in the course of counter-
ing the Gnostic division between the earthly Jesus and the Christ from the
Judgement, and Eternity (New York: Pantheon, 1954), 68–69. For an overview of this prominent
theme in modern eschatological reflection, along with a bibliography of its most illustrious
expressions, see Paul O’Callaghan, Christ Our Hope. An Introduction to Eschatology (Washing-
ton, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 109–112. Callaghan comments: “Empha-
sis on the ethical relevance of final resurrection brings us to the remarkable conclusion that
the risen state to which humans are elevated by the power of God consists of the manifesta-
tion and perpetuation of the personal life history of each person. Everything people do and are
during their lifetimes, even the smallest, most apparently hidden actions, will remain forever
impressed on their risen body, will seal their eternal identity …. That the Parousia will bring
about the resurrection of the life one has lived is a common position among many recent
theologians, both Protestant and Catholic.” (p. 109; italics in original text).
historical memory and the eschatological vision 101
Pleroma, Irenaeus insists not only on the unity of Jesus Christ but also on the
unity and meaningfulness of all of human history, which is recapitulated salv-
ifically in Christ. In this passage, Irenaeus depicts human history as a story of
sin, repentance, and redemption whose narration continues to be performed
within humanity’s eschatological glorification of God:
God was magnanimous (magnaminmis) when humanity transgressed

because he foresaw the victory which would be granted to humanity
through the Word. For, when strength was made perfect in weakness
(2Cor 12:9), it showed the kindness and transcendent power of God. In
the same way, He patiently suffered Jonah to be swallowed by the whale,
not that he should be swallowed up and perish altogether, but that, hav-
ing been cast out again, he might be all the more subject to God (sed
ut evomitus magis subiceretur Deo), and might glorify all the more the
One who had conferred upon him such an unhoped-for deliverance, and
might bring the Ninevites to a lasting repentance. Likewise, at the begin-
ning, God permitted humanity to be swallowed up by the great whale,
who was the author of transgression, not so that they would perish alto-
gether. Rather, he arranged and prepared the plan of salvation, which was
accomplished by the Word … [He did this] so that humanity, receiving an
unhoped-for salvation from God, might rise from the dead, and glorify
God … and in order that human beings might always continue to glo-
rify God, and to give thanks without ceasing for that salvation which they
received from Him, and so that no flesh should boast in the Lord’s pres-
ence (1Cor 1:29) and in order that human beings should never adopt an
opposite opinion with regard to God, supposing that the incorruptibility
which belongs to them is their own naturally, and by thus not holding the
truth, should boast with empty superciliousness, as if they were naturally
like to God (quasi naturaliter similis esset Deo).4
In this passage, Irenaeus speaks of the eschatological state of human perfection

as “incorruptibility, ἀφθαρσία.” In her magisterial study, Homo Vivens. Incorrupt-
ibilité et divinization de l’homme selon Irénée de Lyon, Ysabel de Andia has exten-
sively demonstrated that the language of incorruptibility denotes the reality of
deification for Irenaeus, since the bishop of Lyons considered “incorruptibility”
4 Irenaeus, Against the Heresies (= Haer.) 3.20.1. [Philip Schaff, et al., eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers.
Vol. 1. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2001), xxx (altered); Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, eds., Irénée de Lyon. Contre les
hérésies (Livre III tome 2), SC 211 (Paris: Cerf, 1974), 383–387].
102 anatolios
to be an attribute of divine being.5 But we should note well that Irenaeus does
not here speak of humanity’s eschatological perfection as merely a physical
incorruptibility, a theme, which as I noted earlier, tends to draw the lion’s share
of attention in scholarly interpretations of Irenaeus’s eschatology.6 Rather, Ire-
naeus here describes the condition of deified incorruptibility as a particular
condition of consciousness, of which a significant element is humanity’s mem-
ory of its own historical experience. This historical memory will forever safe-
guard humanity’s awareness that its deified condition is a gift acquired from
God and not something intrinsic to human nature. In turn, that awareness is
an indispensable ingredient, according to Irenaeus, in the eschatological per-
fection of humanity’s glorification of God. This glorification will consist princi-
pally of humanity’s abiding recognition and thankful remembrance of how its
historical downfall was reversed by God’s gracious salvation.
In the paragraph immediately following the excerpt quoted above, Irenaeus
once again responds to the question of theodicy by invoking the prospect
of humanity’s deified incorruptibility and its eschatological glorification of
God through the remembrance of God’s saving work throughout human his-
tory:
Such was the magnanimity (magnanimitas) of God that He allowed

humanity to pass through all these things and to acquire the knowledge of
death so that it may attain to the resurrection from the dead and learn by
experience (experimento discens) what it had been liberated from. In this
way human beings will always give thanks to the Lord, having obtained
from him the gift of incorruptibility and will love him all the more. For
the one to whom more is forgiven loves more (Luke 7.43).7
5 De Andia, Homo vivens, 333–334. On the attainment of incorruptibility as coterminous with

the process of deification, see also Michel Aubineau, “Incorruptibilité et divinization selon
saint Irénée,” RSR 44.1 (1956): 25–52.
6 So, for example, de Andia focuses principally on the understanding of incorruptibility as
transformation of the flesh. In speaking of the Spirit’s role in this process, she explains: “Pour
Irénée, l’opus Spiritus est la ‘maturation’ ou la ‘preparation’ de la chair à la vision de la lumière
paternelle incorruptible, par une spiritualization progressive de la chair, grâce à l’ incarnation
du Verbe et à la Pentecôte de l’Esprit sur l’Église.” (334). She further describes humanity’s
eschatological fulfillment as “la parfait resemblance au Verbe incarné, Image de Dieu, par la
‘transformation’ (μεταμόρφωσις) de la chair par l’Esprit et sa ‘conformité (συμμόρφωσις)’ au
Fils.” (335).
7 Haer. 3.20.2; Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 450 (altered); Rousseau and Doutreleau, Irénée de
Lyon, 388.
In these and similar passages, Irenaeus clearly presumes that the deified
eschatological condition of humanity will consist not merely of a vision of the
naked divine essence but also of the glory of God manifested in God’s salvific
activity throughout the course of human history. This remembrance will ensure
that the condition of deified human beings will be forever Eucharistic, con-
taining an eternal thankful anamnesis of God’s salvific activity within human
history. The eschatological song of humanity’s glorification of God will thus for-
ever recapitulate the utterance of Jonah: “I cried by reason of my affliction to
the Lord my God, and he heard me out of the belly of the whale.” Humanity’s
memory of its experiences within the belly of human history will reverberate
into eternity.
It can be readily conceded that Irenaeus does not present an explicit and
thematic treatment of the perseverance of historical memory in the consum-
mated condition of deification. Nevertheless, as these passages attest, he does
seem to presuppose that historical memory endures within humanity’s escha-
tological vision of God and indeed forever animates and informs that vision.
The question to be answered now, in the second part of this essay, is whether
this presupposition on Irenaeus’s part is merely a fleeting improvisation to
which he occasionally resorts, or whether it is indeed integral to his global
theological vision. In order to argue for the latter position, I will now try to
show that Irenaeus’s presumption of the perseverance of historical memory in
the eschatological stage of human deification is seamlessly intertwined with
three other key principles of his theological vision: 1) the irreducible difference
between God and creation; 2) the knowability of God through the medium
of human history; and 3) the mutually related glories of God and human-
ity.
2 Three Irenaean Principles Underlying the Affirmation of the

Eschatological Persistence of Historical Memory
2.1 The Difference between God and Creation

In the first Irenaean passage quoted above (Haer. 3.20.1), the bishop of Lyons
cited as one of the eschatological benefits of human history that it will afford
humanity an eternally unforgettable education in its own creatureliness. More-
over, Irenaeus asserts that the integrity of the condition of eschatological deifi-
cation in fact depends on humanity’s recognition that its likeness to God does
not accrue to it naturally but is an undeserved gift from God. Irenaeus suggests
that it is precisely the historical experience of humanity’s fall and God’s sal-
vation that will forever prevent it from once again throwing away the gift of
104 anatolios
its divine likeness out of the mistaken and prideful assumption that it is not a
superadded (“unhoped for”) gift but simply a feature of its own nature.
However fleeting may be this intimation of the persistence of historical
memory within humanity’s condition of deification, it is a completely organic
outgrowth of Irenaeus’s pervasive emphasis on the irreducible distinction
within the positive relation between God and creation. This conception was
honed against Gnostic teaching that threatened both sides of this dialectic.8
On the one hand, Irenaeus reports his Gnostic opponents as teaching that this
world was the product not of the true God but of the renegade Demiurge, who
was in turn the result of the inordinate passion of Sophia, the youngest of the
aeons within the divine Pleroma.9 In opposition to this conception, Irenaeus
emphasized the mutual positive relation between God and creation. This world
was directly fashioned by the true God, without the use of any extraneous inter-
mediaries, but through his own “two hands”, the Son and the Spirit.10 Creation is
both entirely dependent on God and the testimony to His power and goodness.
On the other hand, some Gnostics held that some human beings, the “pneumat-
ics,” contained a divine spark which granted them a natural kinship with the
realm of the Pleroma.11 Irenaeus consistently counters both the Gnostic sep-
aration and the Gnostic conflation of the divine and the creaturely, insisting
that God and the world are both positively related and irreducibly distinct. The
positive relation does not mitigate the irreducible difference and the difference
does not lessen the positive relation but rather establishes it.12
Invoking the language of John Henry Newman, we can say that, for Irenaeus,
humanity’s eschatologically enduring historical memory will enable it to eter-
nally give a real assent and not just a notional assent to its own creatureliness.13
For Irenaeus, this real, historically-informed assent to its own creatureliness is
8 For the purposes of this essay, we need not be detained by recent debates about the via-
bility of the “gnostic” label for describing Irenaeus’s opponents, since we are here only
concerned with Irenaeus’s theological response to his own construction of his opponents’
position and not directly with the accuracy of that construction. The case against the
aptness of the “gnostic” label has been made most notably by Michael Allen Williams,
Rethinking “Gnosticism”: an Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1996).
9 For Irenaeus’s account of the creation of the world by the Demiurge, along with the col-
laboration of Sophia of which the Demiurge itself was not aware, see Haer. 1.5.1–6.
10 See Haer. 4.20.1; 5.6.1.
11 Haer. 1.7.3.
12 See Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius. The Coherence of His Thought (London: Routledge,
1998), 19–24.
13 John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent (Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press), 49–92.
indispensable for humanity’s appropriation of its gifted deification. Without

such historical memory, Irenaeus intimates, humanity would once again be in
danger of grasping the gift of deification as if it was its natural birthright, just
like Adam and Eve did in the garden. It is important to take careful note at this
point of Irenaeus’s studied ambivalence with regard to the language of deifi-
cation, which he by turns both accepts and rejects. At times he applies the
verse from Ps 82:6 “I have said, you are gods, and all sons of the Most High”
to humanity’s eschatological attainment to the full likeness of God.14 But else-
where, invoking the irreducibility of the Creator-creature distinction, he insists
that human beings can never be called “gods” in the most proper sense:
But the things established are distinct from him who has established
them, and what have been made from the One who made them … so that
indeed the one who made all things can alone, together with His Word,
properly be termed God and Lord. But all the things which have been
made cannot have this term applied to them, neither should they justly
assume that title which belongs to the Creator.15
Irenaeus’s apparent ambivalence with regard to the language of deification

should not be interpreted as vacillation or indecision on his part. Properly sit-
uated within the architectonic of his thought, it is rather an expression of his
consistent qualification that the gift of humanity’s assimilation to God is pre-
cisely a gift of God’s power manifested in human weakness. This Pauline trope
(cf. 2Cor 12:9), which was employed by Irenaeus in the first passage quoted
above (Haer. 3.20.1), is typically used by Irenaeus with an eschatological inflec-
tion, in order to assert that the fruition of humanity’s perfection must coincide
with the consummation of humanity’s grasp of its own weakness.16 As we saw
in Haer. 3.20.1, humanity’s recognition of its own weakness enables it to be
more subject to God and thus more receptive of the divine power which assim-
ilates it to God. The more human beings learn how different they are from
God, the more they are enabled to become like God, and that is how the whole
extent of human history becomes an education in deification. The consumma-
tion of this deification is also a consummation of humanity’s loving subjection
to God.
14 Haer. 3.6.1; 4.38.4. For Irenaeus’s employment of this verse in the construction of his the-
ology of deification, see Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic
Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 105–110.
15 Haer. 3.8.3; Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 422 (altered).
16 Apart from Haer. 3.20.1, discussed above, see Haer. 5.2.3; 5.3.1; 5.9.2.
106 anatolios
Irenaeus’s conception of this historical pattern is given expression, among

other places, in the course of his response to the Gnostic repudiation of the dis-
pensation of the Old Testament. Rejecting a strict antithesis between the Old
Law and the Gospel, Irenaeus maintains that the two dispensation should not
be opposed in terms of the slavery of the Law and the freedom of the Gospel.
Rather, Christ has intensified the precepts of the Law so as to bring about
a greater subjection to God which coincides with the fulfillment of human-
ity’s capacity to glorify its Maker: “the more extensive operation of liberty
implies that a more complete subjection and affection toward our liberator
has been implanted within us. For He did not set us free for this purpose,
that we should depart from Him … but that the more we receive his grace,
the more we should love Him. Now the more we have loved Him, the more
glory shall we receive from Him, when we are continually in the presence of
the Father.”17
Note that in the first passage we looked at, Irenaeus had said that God
allowed sin so that humanity might become all the more subject to God and
glorify God all the more. We can see now that this notion is consistent with Ire-
naeus’s distinctive interpretation of the meaning of human history, as paradig-
matically exemplified in the transition from the Old to the New Covenant. The
persistence of historical memory informs the subjection to God which, for Ire-
naeus, enables the glorification of God by which humanity itself is glorified and
deified. Irenaeus’s presumption of the persistence of historical memory within
the eschatological condition of human deification is thus deeply inter-twined
with his understanding of the inner meaning of human history, his preoccu-
pation with the absolute irreducibility of the Creator-creature distinction, as
well as with his strongly dialectical understanding of deification as a condition
in which human beings become divine precisely by fully appropriating their
creatureliness.
2.2 The Knowability of God in History

Irenaeus’s occasional intimations that humanity’s historical experience is inte-
gral to the eschatological vision of God should also be logically situated within
his general affirmation of the knowability of God throughout every phase of
human history. Though this affirmation is pervasive in Irenaeus’s work, it can
be obscured by an overemphasis on his apophaticism.18 It is admittedly easy to
17 Haer. 4.13.3; Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 478.

18 For a generally balanced and nuanced portrait of Irenaeus as a “mystical theologian” and
“the first really apophatic theologian,” see Nicholas Gendle, “St. Irenaeus as Mystical The-
ologian,” The Thomist 39 (1975): 185–197. However, Gendle sometimes lapses into the inter-
fall into such one-sided exaggeration if we put too much non-contextual stock
on certain passages where Irenaeus rails against the “knowledge that puffs up,”
or insists that God is unknowable as far as his greatness but known only with
regard to his love.19 Taking account of the entirety of his treatise and inter-
preting each of the parts in its local context, we are bound to come to the
conclusion that Irenaeus does not categorically deny human knowledge of God
in se, but rather strongly affirms such knowledge as long as it is conceived in
terms consistent with the God-world distinction. According to these terms, cre-
ated beings cannot achieve knowledge of God by their own powers but must be
granted this knowledge as a gift by God Himself. For Irenaeus, the problem with
the Gnostics was not that they claimed to know God, but rather that they sim-
ply made up this so-called knowledge. Their knowledge of God was erroneous
because it was not an authentically creaturely, which is to say, genuinely recep-
tive knowledge. Irenaeus insists that in order to purify oneself of the tendency
to apply one’s own concepts and suppositions onto to God, one must “reflect
that the human being is infinitely inferior to God …. For you, O human being,
are not an uncreated being, nor did you always co-exist with God, as His own
Word, but now through his pre-eminent goodness, receiving the beginning of
your creation, you gradually (sensim) learn from the Word the dispensations of
God who made you.”20
In the last sentence of this passage, Irenaeus expresses the two essential
features of his conception of the creaturely knowledge of God: first, that it
is enabled by Trinitarian divine agency; and second, that it is a gradual pro-
cess that unfolds throughout human history.21 Irenaeus has occasion to artic-
ulate these two features in the midst of an exegetical debate over the inter-
pretation of Matt 11:27 and its Lukan parallel, “No one knows the Son but
the Father and no one knows the Father but the Son and the one to whom
the Son has willed to reveal him.” With respect to the first aspect, that of the
Trinitarian self-mediation of the human knowledge of God, Irenaeus elabo-
rates:
pretation that Irenaeus’s apophaticism amounts to the stipulation of “humanity’s inability

to know God in se,” (p. 193), which is a position against which I will argue below.
19 Haer. 4.20.1.
20 Haer. 2.25.3. Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 396–397 (altered); Adelin Rousseau and Louis
Doutreleau, eds., Irénée de Lyon. Contre les hérésies (Livre II), SC 294 (Paris: Cerf, 1982), 254.
21 For an excellent account of the centrality of the theme of divine manifestation in Ire-
naeus as coextensive with salvation history see Réal Tremblay, La manifestation et la
vision de dieu selon saint Irénée de Lyon, MBTh 41 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1978), 67–
120.
108 anatolios
For the Lord taught us that no one is capable of knowing God, unless he
be taught by God; that is, that God cannot be known without God; but
that this is the express will of the Father, that God should be known.22
For the Son, being present with his own handiwork from the beginning,
reveals the Father to all …. Therefore, in all things and through all things,
there is one God the Father and one Word and one Son and one Spirit and
one salvation to all who believe in Him.23
The second feature of Irenaeus’s conception of the knowledge of God, the

emphasis on the progressive and gradual, which is to say historical, charac-
ter of this knowledge, was deployed to counteract the Gnostic reading of Matt
11:27 which changed the verb “knows” [“No one knows the Father but the Son”]
… to the past tense, so as to read, “No one knew the Father but the Son ….”
This reading was used by Irenaeus’s Gnostics to support their doctrine that the
true God revealed by the Christ from the pleroma was unknown during the Old
Testament dispensation. Against this teaching, Irenaeus emphasized the perva-
siveness of the availability of the knowledge of God at every period of human
history, insisting that it would show neglect on God’s part if there were any
period of human history bereft of knowledge of him. What then of the ostensi-
ble apophaticism of that famous passage to which we have already alluded in
4.20.1, where Irenaeus says:
With respect to his greatness [secundum magnitudinem], it is not possible

to know God, for it is impossible for the Father to be measured. But with
respect to his love [secundum dilectinoem ejus] (for this is what leads us
to God by his Word), those who obey Him always learn that He is so great
a God [semper discunt quoniam est tantus Deus], and that it is He who has
established and selected and adorned and contains all things, including
both ourselves and our world.24
To our modern sensibilities, shaped by Kantian epistemological agnosticism

and pietistic emotionalism, these words easily come to mean that the extent of
our knowledge of God is merely that He exists and that He loves us and that it
22 Haer. 4.6.4. Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 468 (slightly altered).

23 Haer. 4.6.7. Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 469.
24 Haer. 4.20.1. Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 487 (altered); Adelin Rousseau, Bertrand Hem-
merdinger, Louis Doutreleau, and Charlies Mercier, eds., Irénée de Lyon. Contre les hérésies
(Livre IV), SC 100 (Paris: Cerf, 1965), 624.
cannot extend as far as an apprehension of God’s very being, God in se. Along
such lines, one commentator offers the explanation that, for Irenaeus, “human
beings do not see God in the divine greatness and glory. In this sense God is
truly incomprehensible … The sense seems to be, ‘the all-powerful God enables
his lovers to see him, not insofar as God is great and glorious, but rather as God
is loving and kind.’”25 But such an interpretation jars against the immediate
context of Book 4 of Against Heresies, in which Irenaeus is preoccupied with
affirming precisely the knowledge of the Father through the Incarnate Word. In
fact, Irenaeus is not at all suggesting that the knowledge of God’s greatness has
a different objective content than the awareness of God’s love. Rather, knowing
the greatness of God “according to love” simply means knowing the greatness of
God through Christ. The evidence in support of the latter reading is extensive,
as long as we are careful not to read discrete statements out of context and with-
out attention to their inter-textual signification. So, for example, shortly before
the statement quoted above, Irenaeus contends that “God cannot be measured
in the heart and is incomprehensible to the mind.”26 The apophaticism of this
statement, however, is transformed into a Christological cataphaticism as soon
as we recall Irenaeus’s declaration, earlier in Book 4, that the Son is the mea-
sure of the Father: “the unmeasurable Father was himself subjected to measure
in the Son, for the Son is the measure of the Father.”27 What Irenaeus is saying,
then, is that it is indeed impossible to know God in his greatness, since the
Father cannot be measured, except through his loving manifestation in the Son,
who is the measure of the Father, and who enables those who obey Him to learn
the greatness of the Father.
This interpretation is further confirmed by other occurrences of the motif
of the contrast of the knowledge of God “according to his greatness” and
“according to love”. Thus, a few paragraphs after 4.20.2, Irenaeus speaks of “one
God … unknown as far as his greatness, but as regards his love, He is always
known through him by whose means he ordained all things (unus igitur deus
… qui secundum magnitudinem quidem ignotus … secundum autem dilectionem
cognoscitur semper per eum per quem constituit omnia).”28 And in the paragraph
25 Mary Ann Donovan, One Right Reading? A Guide to Irenaeus (Collegeville, MN: Michael
Glazier, 1997), 117.
27 Haer. 4.4.2. Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 466. “Et bene qui dixit ipsum immensum Patrem
in Filio mensuratum; mensural enim Patris Filius.” Adelin Rousseau, Bertrand Hemmer-
dinger, Louis Doutreleau, and Charlies Mercier, eds., Irénée de Lyon. Contre les hérésies
28 Haer. 4.20.4. Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 488 (altered; my emphasis); Adelin Rousseau,
110 anatolios
after that: “As far as his greatness and unutterable glory ‘no one shall see God
and live,’ for the Father is incomprehensible, but according to his love and his
kindness toward humanity and almightiness, He even grants to those who love
that they may see him. (Sed secundum magnitudinem quidem ejus et inenarra-
bilem gloriam nemo videbit Dominum et vivet, incapabilis enim Pater, secundum
autem dilectionem et humanitatem et quod omnia possit, etiam hoc concedit his
qui se diligent, id est videre Deum).”29 As we can see from these passages, it
is impossible, in Irenaean terms, to understand God’s greatness and glory as
delineating a separate and higher realm of divine being which cannot be seen
as distinct from some lower levels of divine benevolent emotion which can be
seen. Rather, Irenaeus is saying that the one true great and glorious God can
be seen, through Jesus Christ, who is the visibility of the Father,30 but that this
vision is only rendered accessible to creatures through God’s love and kind-
ness. God’s greatness and glory is in itself unattainable, but becomes accessible
through his loving self-mediation.31
It might seem that in dwelling on these fine distinctions within Irenaeus’s
theological epistemology, we have strayed from our specific focus on his under-
standing of historical knowledge as integral to the eschatological vision of God.
But, in fact, the distinction which Irenaeus draws between the knowledge of
God according to his greatness and the learning of God’s greatness according
to his love goes to the very heart of our theme. Indeed, this distinction pro-
vides us with a framework for articulating the two basic options for conceiving
of eschatological knowledge of God. Will such knowledge be a comprehen-
sion of the divine greatness in and for itself, independently and in abstraction
from God’s loving self-disclosure through human history which is recapitulated
Bertrand Hemmerdinger, Louis Doutreleau, and Charlies Mercier, eds., Irénée de Lyon.
Contre les hérésies (Livre IV), SC 100 (Paris: Cerf, 1965), 634.
30 Haer. 4.6.6: “The Father is the invisible of the Son and the Son is the visible of the Father
(Invisible etenim Filii Pater, visibile autem Patris Filius).” Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 469;
Adelin Rousseau, Bertrand Hemmerdinger, Louis Doutreleau, and Charlies Mercier, eds.,
Irénée de Lyon. Contre les hérésies (Livre IV), SC 100 (Paris: Cerf, 1965), 450.
31 The interpretation offered above accords with that of Ysabel de Andia, who further points
out Irenaeus’s exegetical transposition of the paradox of the unknowability of God accord-
ing to his greatness and his knowability according to his love through a synthesis of Ex
33:20 (“You cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live”) and Luke 18:27 (“what is
impossible to human beings is possible to God”). De Andia aptly summarizes Irenaeus’s
point as asserting that “voir Dieu est impossible aux homes, se laisser voir par les homes
est possible à Dieu.” (Homo Vivens, 322).
in Christ? Or will it in fact consist of an eternal learning of God’s greatness

that will always include an eternal remembrance of God’s loving Christolog-
ical self-disclosure in history in such a way that history itself will be drawn
up into our eschatological knowledge of God? As we have seen, Irenaeus cat-
egorically rejects the first option with regard to our knowledge of God within
human history and nowhere suggests that it is a valid option in the eschato-
logical knowledge of God. Quite to the contrary, the passages we have looked
at earlier, in which Irenaeus seemed to presume that the historical memory
of humanity’s salvation will provide material for an eternal doxology, suggest
that he was committed to the second option. Consistently with these passages,
Irenaeus’s celebrated dictum about the unknowability of God according to his
greatness and his knowability according to his love, does not in fact assert an
apophatic limit to our objective knowledge of God, but rather proclaims that
we can only know God through his loving interaction with us through Christ,
as manifested throughout the course of human history. To know God “accord-
ing to his love” means to know God through Christ and thus, through human
history, which is recapitulated in Christ and whose recapitulation defines the
very person of Christ.
2.3 The Mutual Glorification of God and Humanity

The texts which I cited at the beginning of this essay asserted that humanity’s
historical experience will enable it to perform a greater eschatological glorifica-
tion of God, “so that humanity, receiving an unhoped-for salvation from God,
might rise from the dead, and glorify God … and in order that human beings
might always continue to glorify God, and to give thanks without ceasing for
that salvation which they received from Him.”32 In that passage, as we have
seen, Irenaeus linked the notion of the eschatological persistence of historical
memory with one of his grand architectonic motifs, that of the mutual glo-
rification of God and humanity. Let us now explore the logical and semantic
connections between these two themes in order to further appreciate how the
notion of the eschatological persistence of human history, though implicit, is
still integral to Irenaeus’s theological vision.
Irenaeus speaks of humanity’s glorification in both an active sense, in terms
of humanity’s rendering glory to God, and in a passive sense, in terms of
humanity’s being glorified by God. According to the latter passive sense, Ire-
naeus identifies humanity’s glorification by God with the consummate stage of
human deification. In this ultimate stage of human perfection, humanity is said
32 Haer. 3.20.1. Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 450 (altered).

112 anatolios
to “partake” or “receive” the glory of the Father.33 As is well known, Irenaeus says
that the glory of God is the living human being, and this statement is sometimes
taken to be emblematic of his characteristic positive and optimistic humanism.
As is somewhat less widely known, he also says that the glory of the human
being is the vision of God: “The glory of God is a living human being; and the
life of the human being consists in beholding God. Gloria enim Dei vivens homo;
vita autem hominis visio Dei.”34 The proper starting place for properly ordering
these corresponding aspects of Irenaeus’s teaching on the mutual glorification
of God and humanity is his understanding that the human glorification of God
consists in a participation in God’s own self-glorification. Irenaeus insists that
humanity’s glorification of God can add nothing to God’s self-standing glory,
which precedes creation and which consists in the eternal mutual glorification
of the Father and the Son. God does not stand in need of human glorification,
says Irenaeus, because “not only before Adam but before all creation, the Word
glorified his Father, remaining in Him and was himself glorified by the Father, as
[the Lord] himself said, ‘Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you
before the world was’ (John 17:5).”35 However, out of his goodness and love, God
granted humanity the opportunity to serve and worship him, and this doxo-
logical servanthood constitutes simultaneously humanity’s glorification of God
and God’s glorification of humanity, since the rendering of service and worship
to God is itself the summit of human glory:
Thus, also, service to God (servitus Deum) does indeed profit God nothing,
nor has God need of human obedience; but He grants to those who fol-
low and serve Him life and incorruption and eternal glory … For as much
as God is in need of nothing, so much does humanity stand in need of
communion with God. For this is the glory of the human being, to con-
tinue and remain permanently in the worship of God (permanere in Dei
servitude).36
If the glory of the human being consists in the worship and service of God,
while the glory of God is primarily the glory which the Son renders the Father,
33 See Haer. 5.35.1; 5.35.2; cf. 4.20.4.

35 Haer. 4.14.1. Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 478 (altered).
(Livre IV), SC 100 (Paris: Cerf, 1965), 538. Cf. 4.14.4.
what does Irenaeus mean when he speaks of “the glory of God” as residing in
the “living human being”? In posing this question, we come to the threshold of
ascertaining how the theme of the mutual glorification of God and humanity
is interwoven with that of the persistence of historical memory within human-
ity’s deified state. At the heart of the issue is the question of the exact signi-
fication of “living” and “life” in Irenaeus’s famous dictum, “The glory of God
is a living human being; and the life of the human being consists in behold-
ing God. Gloria enim Dei vivens homo; vita autem hominis visio Dei” (4.20.7).
One has only to read this sentence in its immediate context, and to corre-
late it with similar passages, in order to glean that the language of “living”
and “life” in this famous sentence does not refer to natural life, but to resur-
rected life—as Antonio Orbe has already persuasively argued.37 The “living”
human being who is the glory of God is thus the resurrected human being
who sees God, and who glorifies God, not merely by apprehending the naked
divine essence, but rather by praising God precisely for the experience of being
brought from death to life.38 This interpretation is substantiated by an impor-
tant passage in book 5, where Irenaeus speaks of the gradual progression of
the human being toward the fullness of deification and the glorification of
God:
But we now receive a certain portion of his Spirit, tending towards perfec-
tion and preparing us for incorruption, being little by little accustomed to
receive and bear God …. If therefore, at the present time, having the first
installment, we cry, “Abba, Father,” what shall it be when, on rising again,
we behold him face to face; when all the members shall burst out into a
37 Antonio Orbe, “Gloria Dei vivens homo (Análisis de Ireneo, Adv. Haer. IV, 20, 1–7),” Gregori-
anum 73.2 (1992): 205–268. However, Orbe exemplifies the prevalent tendency to focus on
the theme of “salus carnis” and accentuate the transformation of the flesh, while ignoring
the theme which we are highlighting here, that of the role of historical memory in human
glorification: “Al decir Ireneo que ‘la gloria de Dios es el hombre viviente’ piensa sobre todo
en la última etapa: el hombre dotado en herencia del Espíritu del Padre; carne olvidada
de sí y de sus cualidades congénitas para asumir la cualidad del Espíritu paterno, hecha
conforme al Verbo de Dios.” (264). As I shall argue below, for Irenaeus, human glorification
comes about not only through the flesh “forgetting its natural qualities,” but also through
the mind’s remembering of its history of sin and salvation.
38 Thus, this famous sentence in Haer. 4.20.7 is immediately followed by a contrast between
the natural life of all other creatures and the life that comes from beholding Christ, who
thereby enables us to see the invisible Father: “For if the manifestation of God which is
made by means of the creation affords life to all living in the earth, much more does that
revelation of the Father which comes through the Word give life to those who see God.”
(Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 490).
114 anatolios
continuous hymn of triumph glorifying Him who raised them from the
dead and gave them the gift of eternal life?39
Taking into consideration these intertextual connections, we should under-

stand Irenaeus’s famous dictum that the “glory of God is the living human being
and the life of the human being is the vision of God” to mean that God will
be glorified by the human being who has been brought from death to life and
whose glorification will consist of a hymn of praise and gratitude to God pre-
cisely for this paschal journey. Of course, this is exactly the conception that we
find in the passages cited at the beginning of this essay, in which Irenaeus refers
to the contribution of humanity’s historical experience of sin and redemption
in its eschatological glorification of God. In Haer. 3.20.1, Irenaeus explained that
God permitted humanity’s downfall, “so that humanity, receiving an unhoped-
for salvation from God, might rise from the dead, and glorify God … and that
they might always continue to glorify God, and to give thanks without ceas-
ing.” In the next paragraph, in Haer. 3.20.2, Irenaeus gives a preview and pre-
interpretation of his later celebrated dictum that the glory of God is a living
human being and the life of the human being is the vision of God when he says:
“For the glory of the human being is God, and the receptacle of God’s activity
and all his wisdom and power is the human being (Gloria enim hominis Deus,
operationis vero Dei et omnis sapientiae eius et virtutis receptaculum homo).”40
As we have already pointed out the logic of Irenaeus’s argumentation in Haer.
3.20.1 is that humanity’s resurrected state will include an abiding memory of
the history of its own salvation, its long historical sojourn in the belly of the
whale and its paschal deliverance onto the shores of eternity. Enfolded within
the eschatological glorification of God, this history will not give rise to sorrow
or shame but to an eternal gratitude, a doxological subjection to the God whose
glorious strength was manifest throughout the history of human sin and weak-
ness. The glimpses which Irenaeus gives us of the notion that humanity will
retain such historical memories in their eschatological vision of God might
be fleeting and tantalizing, but they are entirely consistent, in both concep-
tualization and formulation, with Irenaeus’s pervasive theme of the mutual
glorification of God and humanity.

40 Haer. 3.20.2. Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 450 (altered); Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutre-
leau, eds., Irénée de Lyon. Contre les hérésies (Livre III tome 2), SC 211 (Paris: Cerf, 1974), 388.
3 Conclusion
In this paper, I have presented evidence that Irenaeus presumes that the escha-
tological consummation of humanity’s deification will include an ineradicable
memory of its historical experience of sin and salvation. While conceding that
this theme is implicit and presupposed rather than explicitly articulated, I have
nevertheless endeavored to show that it is pervasively intertwined with three
fundamental premises that structure his theological vision as a whole: the irre-
ducibility of the God-creature distinction; the availability of knowledge of God
throughout human history; and the mutual glorification of God and humanity.
Irenaeus was not unique among early Christian theologians in his affirma-
tion of the persistence of historical memory in eternity. Augustine, also, con-
cluded his massive theology of history, De civitate Dei, by reiterating this notion
in notably Irenaean terms. Like Irenaeus, Augustine insisted that the eternal
extension of historical memory will provide the matter for an everlasting grat-
itude and glorification of God. The heavenly city, says Augustine, “will be freed
from all evil and filled with all good, enjoying without fail the delight of eternal
joys; and it will have no memory of faults or punishments. It will not however,
have forgotten its own liberation, and so it will not be ungrateful to its liberator.
As a matter of rational knowledge, then, it will always remember its past evils;
but as a matter of felt experience it will not remember them at all (oblita cul-
parum, oblita poenarum; nec ideo tamen suae liberationis oblita, ut liberatori suo
non sit ingrata: quantum ergo adtinet ad scientiam rationalem, memor praeter-
itorum etiam malorum suorum; quantum autem ad experientis sensum, prorsus
immemor) …. Otherwise, if [the saints] were to have no knowledge at all that
they were once in misery—how, as the Psalm says, will they sing the Lord’s mer-
cies forever? Nothing will give more joy to that city than this song to the glory
of the grace of Christ, by whose blood we are delivered.”41
Indeed, as this passage from Augustine intimates, the denial of the persis-
tence of historical memory in eternity is not at all sustainable from the point
of view of Christian faith, especially on the basis of faith in the eternal persis-
tence of Christ’s humanity. If Christ does not ever shed his humanity but has
ascended with his humanity to sit eternally at the right hand of the Father, then
all of human history sits there with him and in him, if indeed all of human his-
tory has been “recapitulated” in Christ. Yet, I think it is evidence of the perennial
attraction of the Gnostic worldview, that we are always inclined to forget this
41 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 22.30. English translation: William Babcock, ed., Saint Augus-
tine. The City of God. De Civitate Dei (XI–XXII), The Works of Saint Augustine. A Translation
for the 21st Century. Part I. Volume 7 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2013), 553.
116 anatolios
scandalous claim and to imagine eternity precisely as including a massive for-

getting of history. Over against this perennial temptation, the distinctive virtue
of Irenaeus’s sounding of this theme is precisely the way in which he presup-
poses it as not some outlying speculation, but as intertwined with the whole
fabric of Christian faith.
At the beginning of this paper, I suggested that Irenaeus has an affinity with
a trajectory in modern theology which explicitly emphasizes the persistence
of historical memory in eternity. Yet, it seems to me that there is a notable dif-
ference in tone between Irenaeus’s presentation of this theme and his modern
counterparts. Modern theologians tend to stress the persistence of humanity’s
positive achievements in the stage of eschatological glory. This emphasis is at
least partly due to the pressures felt by modern theologians to concede some
ground to the positive valuations of the dynamics of human history offered by
Hegel and Marx. Irenaeus’s vision certainly does not preclude an affirmation
of the eternal persistence of human achievements in the state of eschatologi-
cal glory. But it seems to me that Irenaeus’s conception of the relation between
history and eschatology has a more properly theocentric orientation as well as
a more biblical—and more realistic—vision of the pathos of human history.
Hegel and Marx and the Enlightenment notwithstanding, we know very well
that human history is not just a history of achievement and progressive illumi-
nation but also of failure and tragedy and sin and suffering. At the same time,
for Irenaeus, human history is not finally a tragedy and not merely a comedy,
but above all, a doxology in which divine power and love will be glorified on
the basis of the tortuous history of human weakness and sin.
In order to fully appreciate the scandal and the challenge of Irenaeus’s claim,
I would suggest that it might be more productive to compare it not so much
with the rhetoric of some strands of modern Christian eschatology but with the
austere and triumphalistic realism of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal return
of the same.42 I would agree with the interpretation of this weird notion of Niet-
zsche’s which considers it as not so much a cosmological and empirical claim
but as a thought experiment designed to test the absoluteness of the super-
man’s “yea-saying,” the unqualified affirmation of what is and what has been.43
42 “For your animals know well, O Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, you
are the teacher of eternal recurrence-that is your destiny! That you as the first must teach
this doctrine …. Behold, you know what you teach; that all things recur eternally, and
we ourselves too; and that we have already existed an eternal number of times, and all
things with us.” Frederick Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” in Walter Kaufmann, ed.,
The Portable Nietzsche (London: Penguin, 1954), 332.
43 For such an interpretation of Nietzsche’s notion of eternal recurrence as “a provocative
The Christian version of the claim of the eternal persistence of historical mem-
ory is, of course, much more profoundly dialectical than Nietzsche’s notion but
its dialectic subsumes the partial validity of the latter’s genuine insight. There is
an element of the eternal return of the same in the Christian claim. The paschal
transformation of history in eternity presumes a dialectic of both sameness and
massive glorified difference. But the sameness is necessary in order for the dif-
ference to be intelligibly apprehended. Irenaeus reminds us that we must be
able to remember our mournful sojourn in the belly of the whale in order to
cry out with eternal gratitude: “I cried by reason of my affliction to the Lord my
God, and he heard me out of the belly of the whale.”
Of course, what is ultimately at stake for Irenaeus in his insistence on the
eternal persistence of this dialectic is not the self-affirmation of the superman
through his unqualified yea-saying, but rather the glorification of God through
the history of human sin and suffering. That is why, in the end, I would ven-
ture to suggest that Irenaeus’s intimations about the contribution of historical
memory to eschatological glorification very much bear the stamp of the mes-
sage of the prophet Isaiah, who described the manifestation of divine glory as
an event in which “the haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the
pride of everyone will be humbled; and the Lord alone will be exalted on that
day.” (Isa 2:11). Irenaeus seems to strongly suggest that humanity’s eschatologi-
cal deification will be eternally informed by the humbling memory of its own
historical experience, thus ensuring that even in the condition of humanity’s
eschatological deification, the Lord alone will be exalted on that everlasting
day. Humanity’s eschatological glory will thus coincide with its eternal glori-
fication of the greatness of God that was lovingly manifested in Christ, in the
midst of the long and humbling history of human weakness.
and serious theory of human personality,” rather than a cosmological claim, see Alexan-
der Nehamas, “The Eternal Recurrence,” PhilosRev 89.3 (1980): 331–356 at 356.
chapter 6
Flesh Invested with the Paternal Light: St Irenaeus

on the Transfiguration of the Body
John Behr
Behold I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and
we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imper-
ishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.
1Cor 15:51–54
So speaks the Apostle. The mystery he is speaking about is one which is greater
in scope even than death and resurrection—“not all will sleep but we shall all
be changed.” The proclamation of this mystery comes at the conclusion of his
analysis of the transformation effected through death and resurrection (1 Cor
15:35–50): “what is sown does not come to life unless it dies,” and what is sown
is a bare kernel of the body which is to be; just as God has given different but
suitable bodies to each, bodies which differ in their glory, so it is with the res-
urrection: our body is sown in dishonor, but it is raised in glory; it is sown as
animated by a breath of life, but it is raised by the life-giving Spirit, transform-
ing the body made of the dust of the earth into a heavenly human being, so
that even if flesh and blood does not inherit the kingdom, they will, as Irenaeus
asserts against the Gnostics, be inherited, transformed into a heavenly glory.
The transformation of the body spoken of by the Apostle Paul is brought
together with the theme of the glory of God spoken about by the disciple John
in a unique way by St Irenaeus of Lyons. There is probably no other theologian
in whose writings the theme of glory reverberates so profoundly and beautifully
as St Irenaeus. The work of Christ culminates, he says, with the paternal light
resting upon the flesh of our Lord and coming to us from his resplendent flesh,
so that we might attain to immortality, having been invested with the paternal
light (Haer. 4.20.2). The glory of God that dwelt in “the tent of meeting” or “wit-
ness” (regularly translated as ἡ σκηνὴ τοῦ μαρτυρίου in the LXX), and likewise
in the Temple, now culminates in the specific handiwork of God itself, for, as
Irenaeus puts it in one of his most beautiful statements, “the glory of God is a
living human being” (Haer. 4.20.7), meaning by this, as we will see, the martyr.

flesh invested with the paternal light 119
These statements come in the midst of a long chapter replete with further
Johannine themes, such as life and seeing and knowing God. Irenaeus begins
by contrasting the greatness of God, on account of which it is not possible to
know God, with his love, by which the Word leads us to God (Haer. 4.20.1). Scrip-
ture asserts that there is one God, and so too does the Lord when he claims
that “all things have been delivered to me by my Father” (Matt 11:27, Haer.
4.20.2). Irenaeus then explains the scope of this “all things” by way of the Apoc-
alypse:
But in “all things” [it is implied that] nothing has been kept back, and for
this reason the same one is “the judge of the living and the dead” [Acts
10:42]; “having the key of David, he shall open, and no one shall shut, he
shall shut, and no one shall open” [Rev 3:7]. “For no one was able, either in
heaven or in earth, or under the earth, to open the book” of the Father, “or
to behold him” [Rev 5:3], with the exception of “the Lamb who was slain”
[Rev 5:12], and who redeemed us with his own blood, receiving power over
all things from the same God who made all things by the Word [cf. John
1:3], and adorned them by [his] Wisdom, when “the Word was made flesh”
[John 1:14]; so that even as the Word of God had the sovereignty in the
heavens, so also might he have the sovereignty in earth, inasmuch as [he
was] a righteous human, “who did no sin, neither was there found guile in
His mouth” [1Pet 2:22]; and so that he might have the pre-eminence over
those things which are under the earth, he himself being made “the first-
begotten of the dead” [Col 1:18]; and so that all things, as I have already
said, might behold their King, and so that the paternal light might meet
with and rest upon the flesh of our Lord, and come to us from his resplen-
dent flesh, and so that in this way the human being might attain to immor-
tality, having been invested with the paternal light.
Haer. 4.20.2
Only the slain Lamb has received all power, wealth, wisdom and might [cf. Rev
5:12] and so he alone is able to open the book, and this, Irenaeus specifies, is
“the book of the Father.” The revelation of the content of the paternal book by
the slain Lamb is associated by Irenaeus with the Word becoming flesh, for it is
the slain, enfleshed, Word who alone makes known or exegetes (ἐξηγήσατο) the
Father, as the Prologue of John concludes. This action enables five things: (1) it
grants the Word preeminence upon earth and also under the earth; (2) it brings
all to behold their King; (3) and it enables in this way the paternal light to come
to rest on the flesh of Christ; (4) and, through his resplendent flesh, to us; (5) so
that we too, finally, robed in this paternal light, might attain immortality.
120 behr
Irenaeus then begins the next section by showing that there is one Word,
the Son, who is always with the Father, and that Wisdom, the Spirit, is always
present with him. He then continues:
Now this is His Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, who in the last times became
a human being among humans, that he might join the end to the begin-
ning, that is, the human being to God. Wherefore the prophets, receiving
the prophetic gift from the same Word, announced his advent accord-
ing to the flesh, by which the blending and communion of God and the
human being took place according to the good pleasure of the Father, the
Word of God foretelling from the beginning that God should be seen by
human beings, and hold converse with them upon earth, should confer
with them, and should be present with his own creation, saving it, and
becoming capable of being perceived by it, and freeing us from the hands
of all that hate us, that is, from every spirit of wickedness; and causing
us to serve him in holiness and righteousness all our days, in order that
the human being, having embraced the Spirit of God, might pass into the
glory of the Father.
Haer. 4.20.4
That at least is how the Latin and Armenian versions of the text read, translat-
ing the now-lost Greek original independently. There is a Greek fragment which
has instead, “who in the last times became a God among humans.”1 It is possible
that this reading might be original, preserving as it does a chiasm in the text;
and there are words in Ignatius which might be taken similarly.2 But it is more
likely to be a scribal error, or perhaps, perplexed at the idea of Jesus Christ (and
not simply the Word) becoming “a human being among human beings,” a scribe
thought it better to say that he was a God among humans. However, if the Latin
and Armenian versions are indeed correct, and Jesus Christ became “a human
1 Florilegium Achridense: Codex Ochrid, Mus. Nat. 84 (Inv. 86), 145; ed. M. Richard et B. Hem-
merdinger, ZNW 53 (1962): 252–255 at 254: Ἕστι δὲ οὗτος ὁ Λόγος αὐτοῦ ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησους
Χριστός, ὁ ἐν ἐσχάτοις καιροῖς θεὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποις γενόμενος, ἵνα τὸ τέλος συνάψῃ τῇ ἀρχῇ, τουτέστιν
ἄνθρωπον θεῷ. Καὶ διὰ τοῦτο προφῆται περὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ Λόγου τὴν προφητείαν λαβόντες προεφήτευ-
σαν αὐτοῦ τὴν ἔνσαρκον παρουσίαν.
2 Cf. Ignatius, Eph. 7.2: “There is one Physician, fleshly and spiritual, begotten and unbegotten,
in a human being becoming God (ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ γενόμενος θεός), in death true life, both from
Mary and from God, first suffering and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord.” Such is Light-
foot’s reading; Ehrman and Stewart prefer the reading ἐν σαρκὶ and translate as “God come
in the flesh” or “God in the flesh” respectively. Although the construction “first … then” only
occurs in one clause, it would seem to govern each pair.
being among human beings,” it falls within the same pattern of thought that
we can also see in St Ignatius, who urges the Christians at Rome not to interfere
with his impending martyrdom: “allow me to receive the pure light; when I shall
have arrived there, I will be a human being” (Rom. 6: ἐκεῖ παραγενόμενος ἄνθρω-
πος ἔσομαι). It is a theme I am exploring further in a book on the Gospel of John,
in which I would connect Christ’s words, when elevated in glory on the cross,
“it is finished” (19:5), to God’s stated purpose in the opening verses of Scripture,
“Let us make a human being in our image” (Gen 1:26–27), which, unlike every
other aspect of creation is given in the subjunctive rather than an imperative:
Scripture opens with God stating his purpose or project, and concludes with
Christ on the cross in glory in the Gospel of John announcing its completion.
Irenaeus continues the chapter we are considering by claiming that this is
what the prophets spoke about beforehand: they were not speaking of “anoth-
er” visible God, alongside the Father, as some assert, but rather were speaking
prophetically. In this way they could indeed assert beforehand that God should
be seen by human beings, for Christ himself has confirmed that “blessed are the
pure in heart for they shall see God” (Matt 5:8). On this basis Irenaeus is then
able to go from God’s declaration to Moses that “no one shall see me and live,”
to the conclusion that it is in fact by seeing God that human beings live!
But in respect to his greatness, and his wonderful glory, “no one shall see
God and live” [Exod 33:20], for the Father is incomprehensible; but in
regard to his love and kindness, and as to his infinite power, even this he
grants to those who love him, that is, to see God, which thing the prophets
did also predict. “For those things that are impossible with human beings,
are possible with God” [Luke 18:27]. For a human being does not see God
by his own powers; but when he pleases he is seen by human beings, by
whom he wills, and when he wills, and as he wills. For God is powerful in
all things, having been seen at that time indeed, prophetically through the
Spirit, and also seen adoptively through the Son; and he shall also be seen
paternally in the kingdom of heaven, the Spirit truly preparing the human
being in the Son of God, and the Son leading him to the Father, while the
Father, too, confers incorruption for eternal life, which comes to every one
from the fact of his seeing God. For as those who see the light are within
the light, and partake of its brilliancy, so also those who see God are in
God, and receive of his splendor. But [his] splendor vivifies them; those,
therefore, who see God, do receive life. And for this reason, he, [although]
beyond comprehension and boundless and invisible, rendered himself
visible and comprehensible and within the capacity of those who believe,
so that he might vivify those who receive and behold him through faith.
122 behr
For as his greatness is past finding out, so also his goodness is beyond
expression; by which having been seen, he bestows life upon those who
see him. It is not possible to live apart from life, and the means of life is
found in participation in God; but participation in God is to know God,
and to enjoy his goodness. Human beings therefore shall see God that they
may live, being made immortal by that sight, and attaining even unto God.
Haer. 4.20.5–6
He continues that as human beings live by seeing God, the Word both reveals
the Father through many economies, so that they should not cease to exist, but
at the same time preserves his invisibility, so that they might always have some-
thing towards which to advance (Haer. 4.20.7). And then he concludes:
For the glory of God is a living human being; and the life of the human
being consists in beholding God. For if the manifestation of God which is
made by means of the creation, affords life to all living in the earth, much
more does that revelation of the Father which comes through the Word,
give life to those who see God.
Haer. 4.20.7
The transition from the word of God to Moses, that “no one shall see me and
live,” to living by seeing God is not, as it is often explained, made on the basis
of “the Incarnation,” understanding by that term “an episode in the biography
of the Word” (as Rowan Williams characterizes this approach),3 who was previ-
ously without flesh, and so invisible, but having taken flesh is now visible in this
world, alongside other things that also “appear” in the world. That would be a
“sight” only available to a handful of people present at the time, all of whom
have died! It is “the pure in heart” that are blessed “to see God,” as Christ says
(Matt 5:8), and while Philip clearly “saw” the one standing in front of him, his
request, “Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied” (John 14:8), clearly indi-
cates that he knows neither Christ nor the Father, as Jesus points out. To see
Jesus “in the flesh,” and so to know the Father, and so to live, is for John, Ignatius,
and Irenaeus, pivoted upon the cross and sharing in his flesh.4 And as such, as
Irenaeus makes clear later, “the living human being” is the martyr:
3 Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 2001 [1987]), 244.
4 For John, see Saeed Hamid-Khani, Revelation and Concealment of Christ: A Theological Inquiry
into the Elusive Language of the Fourth Gospel, WUNT 2.120 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000),
331–406, and Josaphat C. Tam, Apprehension of Jesus in the Gospel of John, WUNT 2.399 (Tüb-
For it is testified by the Lord that as “the flesh is weak,” so “the Spirit is
ready” [Matt 26:41], that is able to accomplish what it wills. If, therefore,
anyone mixes the readiness of the Spirit as a stimulus to the weakness of
the flesh, it necessarily follows that what is strong will prevail over what
is weak, so that the weakness of the flesh will be absorbed by the strength
of the Spirit, and such a one will no longer be carnal but spiritual because
of the communion of the Spirit. In this way, therefore, the martyrs bear
witness and despise death: not after the weakness of the flesh, but by the
readiness of the Spirit. For when the weakness of the flesh is absorbed, it
manifests the Spirit as powerful; and again, when the Spirit absorbs the
weakness, it inherits the flesh for itself, and from both of these is made
a living human being: living, indeed, because of the participation of the
Spirit; and human, because of the substance of the flesh.5
The “Letter of the Christians of Vienne and Lyons to those in Asia and Phry-
gia,” perhaps written by Irenaeus himself, describes exactly such a martyr, the
young slave girl Blandina. Affixed to “the wood,” “hanging in the form of the
cross,” she appeared to the Christians in the arena alongside her as the embod-
iment of Christ: “with their outward eyes they saw in the form of their sister
him who was crucified for them, so that she persuaded those who believe in
him that all who suffer for the glory of Christ have for ever communion with
the living God” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.1.41). Although it is said that it is by their
“outward eyes” that this is seen, it is however only seen by those alongside her
in the arena, or, more accurately, by the author of the letter himself and those
who now read the letter.
Irenaeus further explains this changing relationship between life and death
by developing the passage from the Apostle with which we began, regarding
the transformation of the body: the first Adam was animated by a breath of
life, the second is the life-giving spirit (1Cor 15:44–48; cf. Gen 2:7); we are not
given a different body in the resurrection, but the same body living now by the
Spirit rather than animated by a breath. Irenaeus further explains the differ-
ence between the breath and the Spirit by reference to two verses from Isaiah:
the Lord “gives breath [πνοή] to the people upon the earth and Spirit [πνεῦμα]
to those who trample on it” (Isa 42:5), and while “the Spirit proceeds from
me,” he has, instead, “made every breath.”6 Irenaeus concludes that whereas
the “breath” is common to all creation and is created, the Spirit is “particu-
5 Haer. 5.9.2. Cf. PO 12.5, 738–739 (frag. 6); TU 36.3, 14–19 (frag. 10).
6 Isa 57:16: πνεῦμα γὰρ παρ’ ἑμου ἐξελεύσεται, καὶ πνοὴν πᾶσαν ἐγὼ ἐποίησα.
124 behr
larly on the side of God” and bestowed upon the human race in the last times
through the adoption of sons (Haer. 5.12.2). Moreover, as “the created is other
than him who creates,” the breath is temporal, while the Spirit is eternal; the
breath increases in strength, flourishes, then expires, while the Spirit “embraces
the human being inside and out” and remains with him permanently. For Ire-
naeus, this movement from breath to Spirit, from animation to vivification, is
the arc of the whole economy of God. As he puts it in this carefully coordinated
sentence:
Just as, at the beginning [ab initio] of our formation in Adam, the breath
of life from God, having been united to the handiwork, animated [ani-
mavit] the human being and showed him to be a rational being, so also,
at the end [in fine], the Word of the Father and the Spirit of God, having
become united with the ancient substance of the formation of Adam, ren-
dered the human being living [effecit … viventem] and perfect, bearing the
perfect Father, in order that just as in the animated we all die, so also in
the spiritual we may all be vivified [vivificemur].
Haer. 5.1.3, emphasis added
It must be emphasized that Irenaeus is not proposing two different forms of life,
a “natural” life contrasted with a “supernatural” life, or that somehow our flesh
is not to be vivified by the life-giving Spirit. In another exegetical tour de force,
Irenaeus argues against his opponents that while “flesh and blood may not
inherit the kingdom” as the Apostle put it (1Cor 15:50), they can certainly “be
inherited” (Haer. 5.9–14), in the way that the martyrs, as we saw, do not provide
their witness by the strength of the flesh, but by the Spirit vivifying the flesh.
It is only because the flesh is capable of life even now, through the breath
(as in Haer. 5.1.3), or through the vision of God given by creation (as in Haer.
4.20.7), that it is also capable of being vivified by the Spirit through seeing the
Father. But, as Irenaeus points out, the two cannot co-exist together (Haer.
5.12.2): the reception of the life-giving Spirit requires that the creature die, with
Christ, to receive the life given in Christ, through the Spirit bestowed from the
cross (John 19:30), and so become living human beings. The “breath” is thus
not simply replaced by the Spirit, for it is by using the breath that the nat-
ural mortality of the creature can be turned into a voluntary self-offering in
witness to Christ. “Whoever seeks to preserve his life [ψυχήν, the ‘animation’]
will lose it,” Christ says, “but whoever loses it will gain it” (Luke 17:33, ζωογο-
νήσει, literally “will beget life”). This is the life that Christ offers (John 10:10
etc.), that he himself is (John 14:6), or that, as Irenaeus, together with most
other early writers and manuscripts, reads John 1:3–4: “what came to be in
him was life and the life was the light of human beings.”7 Again, light, life,
and human beings for a tight thematic unity.
Irenaeus continues in Haer. 5.1.3, by emphasizing that the whole economy is
one continuous and uninterrupted project, worked out through the long ped-
agogy of the economy, at the end of which Adam is finally made in the image
and likeness of God:
For never at any time did Adam escape the Hands of God, to whom the
Father speaking, said, “Let us make the human being in our image, after
our likeness” [Gen 1:26]. And for this reason at the end [ fine], “not by
the will of the flesh, nor by the will of man” [John 1:13], but by the good
pleasure of the Father, his Hands perfected a living human being [vivum
perfecerunt hominem], in order that Adam might become in the image
and likeness of God.
Haer. 5.1.3
According to Irenaeus, the reason for the whole, and single, economy of God, is
found in the words of Christ about the glory he had with the Father “before the
world was,” the same glory with which he asks to be glorified as he approaches
the cross (John 17:5), and further asks that his disciples should be there with
him to behold that glory (cf. John 17:24). Following the words of Isaiah, which
speak of the gathering of the posterity, that is, “who is called by my name, whom
I created for glory, whom I formed and made” (Isa 43:6–7), the disciples gather
around his body as the eagles gather around the carcass (cf. Matt 24:28), and so
“participate in the glory of the Lord who has both formed us and prepared us
for this, that when we are with him, we may partake of his glory” (Haer. 4.14.1). It
is to share in the eternal glory of God, to be that glory, that the economy, which
climaxes upon the cross, is initiated, just as for John, the cross is not presented
as a sacrifice atoning for sin, but is primarily the expression of the love that God
is: “in this way God loved the world ….” (John 3:16).
And as it is blood and water that comes from the side of the crucified Christ,
so our entry into and sharing in his resplendent flesh comes through baptism
and eucharist, both of which are understood by Irenaeus as sharing in the Pas-
sion of Christ. The life of the Spirit is something that begins with the pledge
of the Spirit, given in baptism understood as sharing in the death of Christ (cf.
Rom 6:3–11; Eph 1:14), but it is brought to completion in our death and resurrec-
tion:
7 John 1:3–4; cf. Irenaeus haer. 3.11.1 1.8.5; Origen, Jo. 2.132.
126 behr
If then now, having the pledge, we cry “Abba, Father,” what shall it be when
rising again we behold him face to face, when all the members shall burst
forth in an exuberant hymn of exultation, glorifying him who raised them
from the dead and gave them eternal life? For if the pledge, gathering the
human being together into himself, makes him now say “Abba, Father,”
what shall the full grace of the Spirit, which shall be given to human
beings by God, effect? It will render us like unto him, and perfect the will
of the Father: for it shall make the human being in the image and likeness
of God.
Haer. 5.8.1
Begun in baptism it finds completion in the Eucharist, which, as with Ignatius,

is understood as being closely intertwined with sharing in the death and resur-
rection by those following Christ. Irenaeus knows, and quotes, the passage in
which Ignatius speaks about how he hopes to become “the pure bread of Christ”
(Rom. 4; cf. Haer. 5.28.4). However Irenaeus develops this imagery much more
fully in a beautiful and complex passage (a single sentence!), which deserves to
be quoted in full:
Just as the wood of the vine, planted in the earth, bore fruit in its own
time, and the grain of wheat, falling into the earth and being decom-
posed, was raised up manifold by the Spirit of God who sustains all,
then, by wisdom, they come to the use of human beings, and receiv-
ing the Word of God, become eucharist, which is the Body and Blood
of Christ; so also, our bodies, nourished by it, having been placed in the
earth and decomposing in it, shall rise in their time, when the Word of
God bestows on them the resurrection to the glory of God the Father,
who secures immortality for the mortal and bountifully bestows incor-
ruptibility on the corruptible [cf. 1Cor 15:53], because the power of God
is made perfect in weakness [cf. 2Cor 12:9], in order that we may never
become puffed up, as if we had life from ourselves, nor exalted against
God, entertaining ungrateful thoughts, but learning by experience that
it is from his excellence, and not from our own nature, that we have
eternal continuance, that we should neither undervalue the true glory of
God nor be ignorant of our own nature, but should know what God can
do and what benefits the human, and that we should never mistake the
true understanding of things as they are, that is, of God and the human
being.
Haer. 5.2.3, emphasis added
The whole economy of God is thus structured in such a way that we might
learn the truth about God and the human being, and, in the end, become a
human being, the glory of God, with our flesh now invested with the Paternal
light.
chapter 7
Flesh and Fire: Incarnation and Deification in

Origen of Alexandria
Charles M. Stang
My title is Janus-faced: it looks in two directions simultaneously. On the one

hand, the doctrine of the incarnation confesses that God, somehow, became
human in the figure of Jesus the Christ; on the other hand, the doctrine of
deification explores whether and how humans can, in turn, become god. The
threshold over which this Janus figure sits, of course, is the human being, the
ἄνθρωπος. What is a human such that God can become one it in its entirety—
body, soul, and spirit—and what is a human such that it can in turn become
God? And, so, the starting point of my essay will be theological anthropol-
ogy, how Origen imagines the human being in the longue durée drama of its
fall and restoration. With a foundation in theological anthropology in place,
I will then attempt to articulate Origen’s distinctive views of incarnation and
deification, or, in other words, his Christology and his soteriology. I agree with
Anders-Christian Jacobsen that these three—theological anthropology, Chris-
tology, and soteriology—are inseparable threads in Origen’s thought, although
I might cut a slightly different path through these same woods.1
1 Theological Anthropology
Flesh and fire: these are, in the words of my countryman, Ralph Waldo Emer-
son, the walls between which the human being is swung.2 We are accustomed,
at least since the apostle Paul, to think of the opposition between flesh and
spirit, not between flesh and fire. But as von Balthasar insisted in his thematic
anthology, Origen understood spirit and fire—and intellect or mind (νοῦς), for
that matter—as nearly equivalent terms.3 Across his writings, these three—
1 Anders-Christian Jacobsen, Christ—The Teacher of Salvation: A Study in Origen’s Christology

and Soteriology, Adamantiana 6 (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2015).
2 Joel Porte, ed., Ralph Waldo Emerson. Essays & Lectures (New York: Library of America, 1983),
426.
3 First published as Hans Urs von Balthasar, Origenes Geist und Feuer: Ein Aufbus aus seinen

incarnation and deification in origen of alexandria 129
spirit, fire, and mind—name the very core identity of the human being, that in
which the human is created imago dei (κατ’ εἰκόνα θεοῦ). It is as fiery spirits and
minds that we were first created, or better, first made. In Gen 1:27, we read in the
LXX that “God made (ἐποίησεν) the human, according to divine image he made
(ἐποίησεν) it.” ἐποίησεν from ποιεῖν, “to make”—from whence we get “poetry.”
We were once God’s own poems. In Gen 2:7 LXX, by contrast, we read that “God
formed (ἔπλασεν) the human, dust from the earth, and breathed into his face a
breath of life, and the man became a living being.” ἔπλασεν from πλάσσειν, “to
form” or “to mold”—from whence we get “plastic.” If we were once God’s own
poems, we have now become like living plastics, stiff and rigid and enduring
over many lifetimes.
Certain that every detail and difference in the scriptures is significant, Ori-
gen insisted that these two verbs, and these two stories, tell us of two distinct
creations. God first made minds whose sole purpose was to contemplate their
creator. Something distracted them, however, some movement within them-
selves, some force eating away at their powers of attention. All of the minds,
except one, turned away from God to varying degrees, and God formed these
fallen minds into angels, humans, and demons, depending on the degree of
their distraction. Around them all he formed a world in which to house them,
to heal them, to restore them.
The question, though, is not what we once were: it is clear, according to Ori-
gen, we were once fiery minds. The question is not even what we then became:
it is equally clear that with the Fall we fell into flesh, and along the way acquired
souls.4 The question, instead, is: how does our core identity as minds—an iden-
tity we share, by the way, with demons and angels—how does our core identity
relate to our accreted identity, that is, to the souls and bodies that are part of
the human condition here and now? Are these two identities, the core and the
accreted, fully distinct? And if so, what does the core identity have to gain, have
to learn, from the accreted identity? Why, in other words, do we have souls and
bodies?
There are many ways to answer this question, but I wish to offer two models,
both of which can be found in Origen’s own writings. But before I offer these
two models, it might be worth remembering Origen’s preface to Peri archōn,
in which he lays out the apostolic teaching. There, he concedes that apostolic
Schriften (Salzburg: Müller, 1938). English translation by Robert J. Daly, Origen, Spirit & Fire:
A Thematic Anthology of His Writings (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
1984).
4 On the descent of the νοῦς into soul, see Benjamin Blosser, Become Like the Angels: Origen’s
Doctrine of the Soul (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012).
130 stang
teaching has not clearly defined the relationship between the body and the
soul, specifically what the soul’s beginning is, whether and how the soul is in
some continuity with the body that hosts it, perhaps even growing out of it, or
whether and how the soul is inserted into the body from elsewhere, as a sepa-
rate substance. All this, he concedes, “is not explained with sufficient clarity in
the preaching.”5
It should come as no surprise, then, that when we turn to Peri archōn and
to Origen’s other writings, we find him drawn ever deeper into this question of
the relationship of the body and the soul, both to each other and to the spirit
(πνεῦμα), which of course he equates with the mind (νοῦς). I have come to think
that these questions of the ἄνθρωπος constitute the beating heart of Origen’s
thought.
I promised to offer two models with which to think through these ques-
tions of theological anthropology. The first model we might call the “kernel and
husk” model, or indeed, the “core and accretion” model. According to this line of
thinking, the human, like the demon and the angel, was first created as a naked
νοῦς, a mind whose sole aim was to contemplate its creator. When this mind fell,
however, and was given a new place in the order of creation, it was given a soul
and a body to enable its new life. The soul and the body are like the husk of a
kernel, or the accretions on a mineral core. An example of this can be found in
Origen’s commentary on the Gospel of John, where is commenting on John 1:6,
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.” Origen explains that
the man (ἄνθρωπος) sent by God was not John the Baptist as we might think of
him, but is rather just John’s soul, which “being older than his body and sub-
sisting prior to it … [then became] clothed with flesh and blood.”6 John’s soul
is like a Russian doll nestled neatly into his body. Extending the same image,
we might imagine his spirit nestled neatly into his soul. This model for under-
5 De Principiis Pr. 5. John Behr, ed., Origen: On First Principles, 2 vols., OECT (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2017), 16 (text), 17 (trans): “But with respect to the soul, whether it is derived from
the seed being transferred, so that the principle or substance of it may be held to be in the
seminal particles of the body itself, or whether it has any other beginning, and this beginning
itself, whether it is begotten or not begotten, or whether it is imparted to the body from with-
out or not, is not explained with sufficient clarity in the preaching.” (De anima uero utrum ex
seminis traduce ducatur, ita ut ratio ipsius uel substantia inserta ipsis corporalibus seminibus
habeatur, an uero aliud habeat initium, et hoc ipsum initium si gentium est aut non gentium, uel
certe si extrinsecus corpori inditur, necne: non satis manifesta praedicatione distinguitur).
6 Commentari in Iohannem 2.181–182, trans. Ronald Heine, ed., Origen, Commentary on the
Gospel According to John Books 1–10, Fathers of the Church 80 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1989), 143–144.
standing the relationship between spirit, soul, and body makes some intuitive
sense: we can imagine the νοῦς needing to take on layers of clothing in order to
inhabit its new world, or it acquiring accretions of soul and body as it descends
into this world. But this model also raises certain crucial questions. If the νοῦς
is distinct from its encasements, how do these encasements help the νοῦς learn
and grow? How do they help the spirit’s slow rehabilitation? And even if we
could explain how soul and body somehow help rehabilitate the spirit, still we
would run into the question of whether, in the final ἀποκατάστασις or “restora-
tion of all things,” the soul and the body would simply fall away, as the νοῦς was
returned to its rightful nakedness before God. What would such a model, for
example, mean for the doctrine of the resurrection of the body? I will return to
the resurrection of the body at the very end of my essay.
The second model we might call the “spectrum” model, or as I prefer, “states
of matter.” The defining image in Peri archōn is that of fire. If, as scripture has it,
“Our God is a consuming fire” (Deut 4:24, 9:3; Heb 12:29), and if the first minds
were created imago dei, then those minds too were fire, or perhaps better, were
of a material that could become fire. Origen suggests that the unfallen mind
was like a lump of iron in a fire: “receiving the fire throughout all its pores and
veins and becoming wholly fire, provided that the fire is never removed from
it and it itself is not separated from the fire.”7 But of course, with The Fall, the
lump of iron was separated from the fire, and it cooled. Here Origen famously
muses about the etymology of the word for soul, ψυχή:
As God therefore is fire, and the angels a flame of fire (Exod 3:2), and the
saints are all aglow with the Spirit (Rom 12:11), so, on the contrary, those
who have fallen away from the love of God are undoubtedly said to have
cooled in their love for him and to have become cold … If, then, those
things which are holy are termed fire and light and aglow, while those
which are contrary are termed cold, and if the love of sinners is said to
grow cold, it must be asked whether perhaps even the word “soul” (which
in Greek is ψυχή) is so called from a cooling down from a more divine
or better condition, and has been transplanted, that is, it is seen to have
cooled down from that natural and divine warmth, and therefore to have
been placed in its present position with its present designation … From
all these things, this appears to be shown, that the intellect, falling away
7 Prin 2.6.6, Behr, Origen: On First Principles, 210–212 (text), 211–213 (trans): omnibus suis poris
omnibusque uenis ignem recipiens et tota ignis effecta, si neque ignis ab ea cesset aliquando
neque ipsa ab igne separetur.
132 stang
from its status or dignity, was made or named soul; and if restored and
corrected, it returns to being an intellect.8
On this model, we are not minds encased in souls and bodies; neither cores with
accretions nor kernels with husks. Rather, our souls and our bodies are simply
our fiery minds in different “states of matter.” Just as water exists as solid, liquid,
and gas, so too do we. As in physics, where the main difference between states of
matter is the density of the particles, so too with the Fall we descend into den-
sity. We began as God’s poetry and have descended into plasticity. And if body,
soul, and spirit are on this material spectrum, then it is easier to understand
how the spirit might learn something about itself and its world by sojourning
in cooler and denser states, namely in soul and in body.
I have already quoted my countryman and fellow New Englander, Ralph
Waldo Emerson. Emerson was hardly an ardent Origenist. As far as I know,
he mentioned Origen only once, and in passing, in an essay on Plutarch.9 But,
appropriately enough, in his essay “The Poet,” Emerson identifies these two
models of theological anthropology in his own inimitable way. According to
the first, he says, “[w]e were put into our bodies, as fire is put into a pan, to be
carried about; but there is no accurate adjustment between the spirit and the
organ, much less the latter the germination of the former.”10 The problem that
attends this first model is this: if we imagine ourselves as fire put into a pan or
a lamp, then we are left wondering what analogy exists between “the spirit and
the organ,” that is, between the fire and the form that holds and sustains it. If we
persist of thinking of them as distinct, we are left so bewildered by the question
of whether an “accurate adjustment” or ratio can obtain between the two that
we rarely ask the deeper question: whether the form might itself be the out-
growth of the fire, whether the body might be the spirit in a different state of
8 Prin 2.8.3, Behr, Origen: On First Principles, 228–232 (text), 229–233 (trans): Sicut ergo deus
ignis est, et angeli flamma ignis, et sancti quique spiritu feruentes: ita e contrario hi, qui
deciderunt a dilectione dei, sine dubio refrixisse in caritate eius ac frigidi effecti esse dicendi
sunt … Si ergo ea quidem, quae sancta sunt, ignis et lumen et feruentia nominantur, quae
autem contraria sunt, frigida, et caritas peccatorum dicitur refrigescere, requirendum est
ne forte et nomen animae, quod graece dicitur ψυχή, a refrigescendo de statu diuiniore ac
meliore dictum sit et translatum, id est quod ex calore illo naturali et diuiono refrixisse uidea-
tur, et ideo in hoc quo nunc est et statu et uocabulo sita sit … Ex quibus omnibus illud uidetur
ostendi, quod mens de statu ac dignitate sua declinans, effecta uel nuncupate est anima; quae
si reparata fuerit et correcta, redit in hoc, ut sit mens.
9 Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Works, Vol. X: Lectures and Biographical Sketches
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1890), 247.
10 Porte, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Essays & Lectures, 447.
matter. This second model is in fact precisely what Emerson endorses: “[in fact]
we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire and torch-bearers, but
children of the fire, made of it, and only the same divinity transmuted, and at
two or three removes, when we know least about it.”11 To my mind, Emerson
has captured Origen’s anthropology perfectly. We are children of fire, which is
to say that we are children of God. At our best, we are at one remove: irons
in the fire of God, in Origen’s words, “becoming wholly fire.” At our worst, we
are at two or three removes: fire cooled into soul, soul cooled into body. We
are, in Emerson’s words, “divinity transmuted” and the degree of our remove is
indexed to our knowledge, both of ourselves and of God.
One of the consequences of this second anthropological model is this: our
slow rehabilitation and restoration, which will take place over successive lives
and in successive worlds, is not a process of shedding the body or the soul, but
rather of transforming them both, or as Emerson put it, transmuting them. The
goal, then, is not escape, but transformation. All flesh must once again become
fire.
2 Incarnation
The passages from Peri archōn to which I have been referring are taken from
Origen’s longer discussion of Christ in Book II, Chapter 6. Here Origen intro-
duces his distinctive, and frankly controversial, Christology. For Origen, Christ
is the name we give to that single mind that did not falter in its loving atten-
tion to God its maker, the one mind whose fiery ardor did not cool. This sin-
gle mind enjoyed a complete mutual indwelling with the second divine per-
son: being received wholly into the Son, and receiving the Son wholly into
itself. And on the basis of this shared indwelling, there is a shared naming:
the mind “is called” (appellatur) the Son of God, and the Son of God, in
turn, “is named” (nominatur) Jesus Christ and “called” (appellatur) the Son
of man.12 But crucially—and this point cannot be emphasized enough—the
mutual naming preserves the distinction between the divine creator and the
created mind. Christ can be called the Son of God by virtue of the fact that
Christ’s mind has welcomed the Son of God into itself, and thus there is a
unity of God and mind that warrants us calling that unity by the names proper
to each “half,” so to speak, created and uncreated. But if the mind of Christ
11 Ibid.
12 Prin 2.6.3, Behr, Origen: On First Principles, 208 (text), 209 (trans).
134 stang
can be said to be God, it is in the same sense that an iron in the fire of God
can be said to be fire: its divinity or its fire depends on its full immersion in its
source. You could say that in this case its predicate is borrowed.
The fact that Origen places Christ on this side of the distinction between
creature and creator is no small matter. One result is that Origen’s theological
anthropology evolves hand in hand with his Christology. It should be obvious,
by now, that I have been drawing Origen’s theological anthropology directly
from passages having to do with Christology. Whereas this might not be per-
missible in the case of other thinkers (such as Cyril of Alexandria), it is not only
permissible but entirely necessary in the case of Origen. Why? Because, for Ori-
gen, insofar as Christ is a created mind, he is the same as his sibling minds, who
eventually become angels, humans, and demons. Origen is clear as day about
this in Peri archōn, where he insists, “it cannot be doubted that the nature of
[Christ’s] soul was the same as all others.”13 In the beginning, we were all as
Christ is—in rapt and loving attention of God our creator, wholly receiving the
Son into ourselves, and falling into the Son in turn. So, the description of Christ
as a lump of iron in the fire of God marks not only his beginning, but ours. You
could say, then, that before our fall, we were all Christs.
We know what happened to us—we cooled; fire became flesh; we descended
into denser states of matter. But what is the good of this descent? How does this
cooling serve to help us return to our former fiery selves? If our original sin was
some primordial lapse in our attention, some movement within us that broke
our rapt contemplation, and if God’s punishment must also be a remedy, then
our descent into souls and bodies must somehow serve to train our faculty of
attention, of contemplation. But how could acquiring souls and bodies help
train our minds? The soul is what gives a naked νοῦς the power of sense per-
ception in this world. But what good is sense perception in training the mind
for contemplation, when the senses present only a vast array of distractions,
of things other than God to attend to? And imagine the challenges of embod-
iment in the ancient world. Even if you manage to stave off death until a ripe
old age, embodiment presents a series of distractions from the life of the mind:
childbirth, the burdens of parenting, disease, famine, never mind war and, for
Christians such as Origen, state persecution. How could embodiment be imag-
ined as somehow the remedy for wayward minds?
My suspicion is that the answer lay close to what I said earlier about states
of matter, namely that the descent from higher to lower states of matter has to
13 Prin 2.6.5, Behr, Origen: On First Principles, 210 (text), 211 (trans): Naturam quidem animae
illius hanc fuisse, quae est omnium animarum, non potest dubitari.
do with density. The mind becomes denser, heavier, as it cools into a soul and
a body. The density of our current condition is a remedy because it trains our
minds to attend to God while burdened with our own new weight. It is as if
our minds before the fall were like birds: aloft and fast as lightning; but instead
of holding formation around their source of sustenance, they began to flit this
way and that, looking for sustenance elsewhere, in vain. When God ordained
their descent, God did not strip them of their wings, as happens to the hapless
souls in Plato’s Phaedrus. Instead, their wings acquired more and more weight,
and perhaps so much weight they forget that they were made to fly. But learn to
fly again they can, and must, even with their newly burdened wings. Perhaps
our souls and bodies, then, are for Origen the weights attached to our wings.
And wings that take flight even when so burdened are wings that more likely
to stay aloft and steady in their formation.
Let me explore this idea a bit more by turning to the question of Christ’s
own incarnation. We know why we were incarnated: according to Origen, we
deserved it, and it serves as a slow therapy for our wayward minds. But the
mind of Christ did not deserve incarnation—he is the only one who did not. He
descends to our condition not out of any just deserts, but out of sheer love for
us, his siblings—what the deutero-Pauline epistle calls φιλανθρωπία (Tit 3:4).
Christ’s sojourn among us serves as a model of how a mind can maintain its
unbroken contemplation of its creator, and can do so while being weighted
down with a soul and a body. And the very soul and body Christ took on were
especially weighted down—oppressed, you might say—as a first-century Jew
under Roman occupation, among a long-suffering people waiting for rescue.
So, even with these burdened wings, Christ was able to stay aloft.
And yet what of the crucifixion? What further challenge to contemplation
could be imagined than dying on a cross? Origen says very little about Christ’s
crucifixion in Peri archōn, but what he does say is quite revealing. In Book 3,
Chapter 5, he explains that “the aid of the Author and Creator himself was
required, which restores the discipline, which had been corrupted and pro-
faned, of obeying to the one and of ruling to the other.”14 Those who had been
given rule had corrupted that rule. And naturally those who were ruled were
not keen to obey those rulers. This doesn’t mean, however, that Christ took
on flesh so as to teach Romans how to be better rulers, and Jews better sub-
jects. This worldly political conflict was just the latest and lowest instance of a
14 Prin 3.5.6, Behr, Origen: On First Principles, 434 (text), 435 (trans): sed auctoris ipsius et
creatoris sui opem poposcit, qui et his oboediendi et illis regendi corruptam profanamque
restitueret disciplinam.
136 stang
cosmic conflict among created minds, who were not able to obey God’s com-
mand because they were not able to rule over their own unruly passions. Minds
were created with free will, but with this freedom they rebelled, that is, they
freely chose to obey their own will rather than God’s, and in failing to rule over
their own wayward will, they disobeyed. Their fall prompted a self-perpetuating
miasma of disobedience and misrule—and into this miasma Christ descended
in the flesh. How did his death on the cross transform this state of affairs? “And
therefore the only-begotten Son of God, who was the Word and the Wisdom of
the Father, when he was with the Father in that glory which he had before the
world was (John 17:5), emptied himself and taking the form of a servant became
obedient even unto death (Phil 2:7–8), that he might teach obedience to those
who could not otherwise than by obedience obtain salvation.”15 Our salvation
consists in our obedience, and our obedience requires self-rule. But if we could
not obey God before we had the further burdens of soul and body, what makes
us think we can learn to obey God now? According to Origen, Christ on the
cross models obedience for us by showing us that a mind can be beset by all
the pain and suffering that accompany a soul and a body—psychological fear
and physical torment, for example—and still maintain an obedient attention
to God. The lesson seems to be: if someone can obey and attend even on the
cross, then you know that you can obey and attend to God even amidst the dis-
tractions of soul and body. Jesus on the cross taught us that one can be afflicted
in the flesh and still be aflame.
Another way to understand Origen’s conviction that embodiment is a rem-
edy for wayward minds is to frame the question in terms of time. If different
states of matter are defined by their relative density, we might wonder whether
we descend into a denser experience of time. If the naked νοῦς is like a flit-
ting bird, then perhaps the weight of soul and body is a means of slowing the
mind down, forcing it to move in and through thicker time, as it were. Per-
haps our rehabilitation must be longue durée, not only because our rebellious
wills resist the therapy of embodiment, but because the therapy itself must be
slow. Origen explores this dimension of our embodied rehabilitation in Book 3
of Peri archōn, when he wrestles with the fact that God is said to have hard-
ened Pharaoh’s heart. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart presents Origen with
two related dilemmas. First, and most obviously, it appears that in hardening
15 Ibid.: Vnde unigenitus filius dei, qui erat uerbum et sapentia patris, cum esset in ea gloria
apud patrem, quam habuit antequam mundus esset, exinaniuit se ipsum et formam serui
accipiens efficitur oboediens usque ad mortem, ut oboedientiam doceret eos, qui non aliter
nisi per oboedientiam salutem consequi poterant.
Pharaoh’s heart God violates his free will. Origen dismisses this quickly enough
by insisting that God did no such thing: God is like the rain that falls on dif-
ferent soil; rich soil will teem with abundant life, whereas poor soil will bring
forth only nestles and weeds. Pharaoh’s heart is poor soil, and so God’s rain only
serves to bring forth the evil that is already latent in it. But this leads to the
second, and more interesting, dilemma. Why did God allow, even encourage,
Pharaoh to sink further into his own miasma? Why did God abandon Pharaoh
to his own vice, and not entice him to virtue sooner, as we would expect God
to do?
The answer has to do with time. Origen explains that when it comes to
“the immortality of the soul and the limitless age,” we should not expect, or
even want, that God’s help will come quickly.16 It is better, he says, that we are
brought to salvation slowly, and only after many trials and tribulations. Like a
fever that must run its course before it breaks, our sinful and wayward ways
must be allowed to play themselves out, even if, perhaps especially if, we suf-
fer along the way. If a soul receives succor too quickly, it is likely to lose it
again. A more permanent health is reserved for those who “have patience to
receive over a long period the cultivation that accords with nature.”17 Why?
Because long suffering slowly eats away at our mind’s pride. Until that pride
is breached, the mind will not recognize its own weakness, and it so will not
hear the saving word of God. Like waves on a shore, time will eventually erode
our proud resistance to God’s grace. If the healing comes too soon, it may serve
only to entrench the pride that must be rooted out over successive lifetimes and
worlds. As Origen says, “For God deals with souls not with reference, let me say,
to the fifty years of the present life, but with reference to the limitless age.”18 If
we wish to attain to the eternity of the limitless age, in the ἀποκατάστασις, we
must train ourselves in this temporality, a denser time in which soul and body
serve to slow the mind so that it’s pride can be breached, and grace can find an
opening.
Before I pass from incarnation to deification, I would like to flag what I
have just said as needing further elaboration and refinement. As fascinating
as Origen’s account of incarnation might be, I am left wishing he would have
16 Prin 3.1.13, Behr, Origen: On First Principles, 326 (text), 327 (trans): ὡς πρὸς τὴν ἀθανασίαν
τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τὸν ἄπειρον αἰῶνα.
17 Prin 3.1.14, Behr, Origen: On First Principles, 330 (text), 331 (trans): τὴν κατὰ φύσιν γεωργίαν
μακροθυμήσῃ ὕστερον πολλῷ χρόνῳ λαβεῖν.
18 Prin 3.1.13, Behr, Origen: On First Principles, 328 (text), 329 (trans): Θεὸς γὰρ οἰκονομεῖ τὰς
ψυχὰς οὐχ ὡς πρὸς τὴν φέρ’ εἰπεῖν πεντηκονταετίαν τῆς ἐνθάδε ζωῆς, ἀλλ’ ὡς πρὸς τὸν ἀπέραντον
αἰῶνα·
138 stang
said more about the mind’s experience of soul and body, more about what the
descent into soul and body makes possible for the mind, and how it is rehabil-
itated through these new modes of being, these new “states of matter.” And
I am also left wishing he would have said more about time and the tempo-
rality of rehabilitation.19 I have tried to flesh these out, very briefly, but I do
think that any theological ressourcement of Origen for the twenty-first century
will need to linger over such questions, and perhaps even bring in the modern
and contemporary phenomenological tradition, and its meditations on sense
perception, embodiment, and temporality, to help give fuller voice to Origen’s
insights.20
3 Deification
It’s time that I moved on to my third and final theme: deification. I trust it is
clear by now that any discussion of deification in Origen must first begin with
the mind of Christ: for Christ is the exemplar of deification. He is the mind
all aflame with God’s fire. But we must keep in mind that for Origen Christ’s
“deification” does not annul his created status. Christ remains a created mind,
one who enjoys a mutual indwelling with God the Son. This mutual indwelling
was what was meant for all minds. When, in the end, minds are restored to
their beginning, they will be restored as Christs—even Satan, which is the name
we give to the mind who fell furthest, will be restored to his proper place as a
Christ.21
But remember that Origen insists that “the end is always like the beginning.”
Prima facie, this is not a difficult point to grasp: in the end, we will be as we
were in the beginning, fiery minds whose souls and bodies have once again
become absorbed into the original state of mind-matter. The crucial point, of
course, is that the end is not exactly the same as the beginning; the end is like
19 See, for example, Panayiotis Tzamalikos, Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of Time, SVC 77
(Leiden; Brill, 2006); idem, Origen: Philosophy of History & Eschatology, SVC 85 (Leiden:
Brill, 2007).
20 For an attempt to bring Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment to bear on Ori-
gen’s understanding of pedagogy and rehabilitation, see S. Levy-Brightman, Rereading the
Body: Origen’s Cosmology and the Pedagogy of Human Embodiment (Masters of Divinity
thesis, Harvard Divinity School, 2014).
21 See Lisa R. Holliday, “Will Satan be Saved? Reconsidering Origen’s Theory of Volition in
Peri archōn,” VC 63.1 (2009): 1–23; see also Mark S.M. Scott, “Guarding the Mysteries of Sal-
vation: The Pastoral Pedagogy of Origen’s Universalism,” JECS 18.3 (2010): 347–368.
the beginning.22 So, if it is like the beginning, what is the same, and what is
different? Again, it is easier to answer the former: what is the same? We were
naked minds, and we will be again. What makes the end different is that we
naked minds will not fall again. And that can only be the case if we are somehow
changed by the longue durée drama of having souls and bodies across lifetimes
and worlds. If minds are not permanently changed, then they will fall again.
Whatever happens to minds, then, through their descent into denser states of
time and matter, it must fundamentally transform them. The remedy and reha-
bilitation do not amount to a restoration of the same, but rather to a restoration
of the like. And the end that is like the beginning must be an improvement on
the beginning, because it will be stable in a way the beginning was not. I cannot
be the first to be reminded of these lines from T.S. Eliot’s “Little Gidding,” the
fourth and final of his Four Quartets:
We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning.23
In the ἀποκατάστασις, then, the minds will “know the place for the first time.”
They will have learned something, something they could not have learned were
it not for their sinful rebellion and long, painful rehabilitation. They will pass
through that “unknown, unremembered gate,” the very gate through which
they passed on their way out of the garden, a gate, we are told in Gen 3:24, that is
guarded by an angel with a flaming, circling sword. Armed with the knowledge
they will have gained along the way, the minds will pass unharmed through this
final trial by fire, because they will once again have become all flame and will
regard the sword as a sign of welcome. The final lines of Eliot’s “Little Gidding”
say this better than I can:
22 In the introduction to his edition and translation (pp. lxxx–lxxxix), J. Behr argues convinc-
ingly that Peri archōn is in fact oriented eschatologically, not protologically. In other words,
Origen works out what the beginning was by way of knowing the end will be, namely the
apokatastasis when God will be all in all.
23 T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems, 1909–1962 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 2014), 208.
140 stang
And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.24
Eliot may have Julian of Norwich’s ἀποκατάστασις more in mind than Origen’s
when he says that “all shall be well,” but his final lines on flames and fire make
it seem as if he were reading straight out of Peri archōn: in Origen’s words,
the restored mind “receiv[es] the fire throughout all its pores and veins and
becom[es] wholly fire.” Collectively, the minds will form, in Eliot’s words, a
“crowned knot of fire” around the brow of God.
Origen understood the apostle Peter to be the one who clearly announced
the ἀποκατάστασις πάντων in Acts 3:21, but it is the fifteenth chapter of Paul’s
First Letter to the Corinthians that serves as the centerpiece of his doctrine of
universal salvation. In 15:28 Paul writes, “When all things are subjected to him,
then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under
him, that God may be all in all.” That final phrase, “that God may be all in all,”
serves as shorthand for the ἀποκατάστασις in Origen’s writings. And in Book 3
of Peri archōn, he offers an interpretation of what it might mean:
I reckon that this expression, where God is said to be all in all (1 Cor 15:28),
also means that he is all in each individual person. And he will be all in
each individual in such a way that everything which the rational mind,
when cleansed from all the dregs of the vices and utterly swept clean of
every cloud of wickedness, can sense or understand or think will be all
God; it will no longer sense anything else apart from God; it will think
God, see God, hold God; God will be the mode and measure of its every
movement; and thus God will be all to it.25
God will be all that the deified mind sees, thinks, and holds. And when all the
deified minds are so full, God will be all in all.
24 Ibid., 209.
25 Prin 3.6.3, Behr, Origen: On First Principles, 444 (text), 445 (trans): Et ergo quidem arbitror
quia hoc, quod in omnibus omnia esse dicitur deus, significet etiam in singulis eum omnia
esse. Per singulos autem omnia erit hoc modo, ut quidquid rationabilis mens, expurgate omni
uitiorum faece atque omni penitus abstersa nube malitiae, uel sentire uel intellegere uel cog-
itare potest, omnia deus sit, nec ultra iam aliquid aliud nisi deum sentiat, deum cogitate,
deum uideat, deum teneat, omnis motus sui deus modus et mensura sit: et ita erit ei omnia
deus.
This description of the deified mind, however, immediately raises for Ori-
gen the question of whether this is a condition that can be had in a body. The
answer would seem to be “no,” because a deified mind would have reabsorbed
its cooler and denser states, that is, its soul and its body, as it returned to its
fiery nature. The answer would seem to be “no” because in the ἀποκατάστασις
all flesh will have become fire. But of course Origen cannot let it rest there, not
least because of the fifteenth chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians, where
the apostle speaks of the σῶμα πνευματικόν, “the spiritual body” (e.g. 1 Cor 15:44).
Could it be then that the deified mind has, not a body like ours, but a spir-
itual body, a body which could be deified along with the mind? This seems to
suggest that the mind, once freed of its body here—call it its flesh—can then
acquire its proper body, its spiritual body, in the ἀποκατάστασις. The question
of embodiment is one Origen explores throughout Peri archōn, and since it
touches directly on incarnation and deification, Christology and soteriology,
it can justly be regarded as one of, if not the, abiding questions of this text. Per-
haps it is foolish of me to try to raise this question near the conclusion of this
essay. But I have to raise it, because everything I have said so far depends on
our answer to the question of the body. I confess that I take as bedrock Origen’s
claim in Peri archōn Book 2 that “a bodiless life will rightly be considered only
of the Trinity.”26 If we take this claim seriously, only the three divine persons
are without a body. It means that when God first created, when God first made
minds to receive his fiery nature, he made them with bodies. Later, of course,
he would form souls and what we have been calling bodies in the second cre-
ation. But, nevertheless, there was once a primordial body, a spiritual body. I
think we mislead ourselves, though, if we speak of the first minds as having
been made along with spiritual bodies, because that suggests that God made
two things: minds and spiritual bodies. Whereas I think it is closer to the truth
to say that, for Origen, the minds are the spiritual bodies.27 In other words, God
has only and ever made one thing: call that one thing whatever as you like—
mind, spirit, or spiritual body. It is the one primordial matter that God created
ex nihilo. In its original state, it was capable of receiving God’s fire, of being all
flame. But this single mind-matter was also differentiated, individuated, and
26 Prin 2.2.2, Behr, Origen: On First Principles, 154 (text), 155 (trans): solius namque trinitatis
incorporea uita existere recte putabitur.
27 There is a lively debate in the scholarly literature as to whether, for Origen, the primor-
dial minds were without bodies, or they had bodies (or were themselves bodies). Those
who favor the former view include G. Bürke, H. Crouzel, G.S. Gasparro, P. Martens, and A.-
C. Jacobsen; those who favor the second view include I. Ramelli, B. Blosser, J. Behr, and
A. Fürst.
142 stang
each individual was given free will. And with this free will, the many minds
differentiated themselves even further, beyond mere numerical individuation:
only one remained as it was made to do; others turned away and their mind-
matter was formed into a diverse array of souls and bodies. This diverse array
served as the means of their rehabilitation, as we have already discussed.
I promised to return to the question of the resurrection of the body. Origen
was often suspected of undermining this doctrine, even though he clearly and
unequivocally affirms it in the rule of faith in the preface to Peri archōn. One
can easily see why he fell under such suspicion: if souls and bodies will even-
tually be reabsorbed into mind, then how can we confess a final resurrection
of the body? But with the help of the apostle Paul, Origen turns this suspicion
inside out, or on its head. The thing you are accustomed to calling your body, he
suggests, is only a cooler and denser declension of your true body. If you want
to imagine what your true body is, your spiritual body, made of the same mind-
matter as every other body, then observe the difference between the seed you
plant in the ground, and what grows from the soil. Your true body is as different
from its current form as the flowering plant is from the humble seed. Origen not
only confesses the resurrection of the body, but along the way transforms what
we think the body is. The resurrection of the body is the necessary correlate
of the restoration of all things; or to put that in Greek, the ἀνάστασις coincides
with the ἀποκατάστασις.
I know that Origen’s interpretation of the resurrection of the body is con-
troversial, and almost certainly heretical from the perspective of subsequent
orthodoxy. With every passing year, however, I care less about controversy, and
even less about Origen’s orthodoxy. In that spirit, I wish to make one final sug-
gestion. I have attempted to map the Janus-like movements of incarnation
and deification in Origen’s thought, and to show how a distinctive theologi-
cal anthropology makes sense of it all. In the end, I suggest, Origen wants us
to think of God as having created only one thing, a kind of primordial mind-
matter, which was to serve as the receptacle of his fire. In Eliot’s words, this was
to be a crowning “knot of fire” for the brow of God. In the end that is like the
beginning, in the ἀποκατάστασις, these fiery minds, all deified, will once again
become spiritual bodies. It is only a half-step further, perhaps less, to imagine
Origen saying that God has made for himself a body: us. We are God’s body.28
The drama of the minds’ fall and restoration, led by their sibling Christ, is also
the drama of the descent, dissolution and eventual resurrection of God’s body,
28 Evagrius of Pontus takes this exact half-step in his so-called “Great Letter” or “Letter to
Melania”: “the mind, which is the body of the Spirit and the Word.” Evagr. Pont., Epistula
ad Melaniam, §15, ed. Frankenberg.
of which we are each an essential and inalienable part. According to Origen,

God is quite literally enticing us to restore to God God’s own body. Until then,
God is in some sense unmade, deformed even, not yet “all in all.” From flesh to
fire: our successive reincarnations are in the service of our eventual collective
deification; and our deification is quite literally, and nothing less than, God’s
final reincarnation.
Acknowledgments
This essay was first published in Adamantius 25 (2019). It grows out of an ear-
lier essay of mine, Charles M. Stang, All Flesh Must Once Again Become Fire:
Origen’s Untamed Thinking, Harvard Divinity Bulletin (Autumn/Winter 2017),
6–9. I would like to thank John Behr for reading and commenting on an earlier
draft, as well as the participants in the conference on “Deification and Evolu-
tion” at the Esalen Institute’s Center for Theory and Research in Big Sur, CA, in
November, 2018
chapter 8
St John Chrysostom in the West

Marcus Plested
My acquaintance with Archbishop Alexander Golitzin goes back to the 1990s

when we conducted a fairly lengthy correspondence revolving around our
mutual interests in early Christian asceticism. I recall being particularly taken
with his probing of the then widely accepted dichotomy between Macarius
(pseudo-Macarius/Symeon) and Evagrius of Pontus conceived and presented
in terms of a stand-off between the intellective mysticism of Evagrius, cen-
tered on the nous and the affective mysticism of Macarius, centered on the
kardia.1 Looking back, I see the dismantling or at least nuancing of this partic-
ular dichotomy as something of a precursor to some of my more recent work
probing other dichotomies, most notably that obtaining between Greek East
and Latin West. With this in mind, and given that Archbishop Alexander him-
self has done so much to articulate and interrogate the mystical and ascetic
traditions of the Christian East within a Western context, it seemed appropri-
ate to offer him this study of the remarkable odyssey of a Greek Father in the
Christian West.2
Before speaking of the legacy of St John Chrysostom in the West, we should
first acknowledge the obvious fact that for St John, East and West formed parts
of the undivided Church.3 While he never visited the West, his great love for St
Paul made him long to visit the tomb of the Apostle in Rome and to kiss the very
dust of his body. In a famous passage from his homilies on Romans, Chrysostom
heaps praise on Rome—for its greatness, antiquity, beauty, power, wealth, and
prowess. “But,” he says, “leaving all this aside I call it blessed on this account,
that he [Paul] in his lifetime wrote to them, and loved them so, and conversed
1 See his “Hierarchy versus Anarchy? Dionysius Areopagita, Symeon the New Theologian, Nic-
etas Stethatos, and their Common Roots in Ascetical Tradition,” St Vladimir’s Theological
Quarterly 38 (1994): 131–179. See further my, The Macarian Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), 60–71.
2 This article has its origins in a lecture given in Istanbul in 2007 at a symposium called by His
All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to mark the 1600th anniversary of the
death of his predecessor, St John Chrysostom.
3 First among my acknowledgements, I must mention the indispensable work of Chrysosto-
mus Baur, Saint Jean Chrysostome et ses oeuvres dans l’histoire littéraire (Louvain: Bureaux du
Recueil/Paris: Albert Fontemoing, 1907).

st john chrysostom in the west 145
with them while he was with us, and ended his life there. And on this above all
other things is the city’s importance founded. And like a great and strong body,
it has as two brilliant eyes the bodies of these Saints [Peter and Paul]. The sky
is not so bright, when the sun sends out its rays, as is the city of the Romans,
sending out these two lights throughout all the world.”4
Chrysostom sought help from Rome in his troubled time as Archbishop of
Constantinople and found in Rome an unwavering ally. Between Easter and
Pentecost 404 he wrote to Pope Innocent requesting and getting help—albeit
too late to prevent his final exile. There is, however, no indication that he rec-
ognized any appellate jurisdiction, as witnessed by the fact that he wrote in
similar terms to the other patriarchs of the West: Chromatius of Aquileia and
Venerius of Milan. The West, including the Western Emperor Honorius, gave
her full backing to St John, a show of support that aided his posthumous reha-
bilitation in the East.
It is a striking fact that it is in the West that St John’s stature and authority
are first recognized and proclaimed. It is in the West that he is first appealed
to as a theological authority and by Western writers that the formal cognomen
“Chrysostomus” is first recorded. As early as 392 CE, some years before St John’s
election to the see of Constantinople, St Jerome includes him in his De viris
illustribus immediately following the entry on St Gregory of Nyssa: “John, pres-
byter of the church at Antioch, a follower of Eusebius of Emesa and Diodorus, is
said to have written much, but I have read only his περὶ ἱεροσύνης [On the priest-
hood].”5 The fact that he gives the title in Greek suggests that Jerome read this
work in the original Greek—no difficulty for such an accomplished linguist.
In 404—the very year of Chrysostom’s exile—Jerome draws on Chrysostom to
support his polemic against St Augustine concerning Gal 2:11 (“But when Peter
came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face”). Jerome maintains that neither
Paul nor Peter have sinned here, contrary to Augustine’s assertion that Paul
rightly rebuked Peter for his adherence to the Law. In seeing this as a diplo-
matic and deliberate dissimulation on Peter’s part, Jerome appeals in the first
instance to Origen (whom he still, at that time, held in high regard). He then
adds:
What shall I say also of John, who has long governed the Church of Con-
stantinople, and holding pontifical rank, who has composed a very large
book upon this paragraph, and has followed the opinion of Origen and of
4 Homilies on Romans 32.2 (PG 60 678).

5 PL 23 713.
146 plested
the old expositors? If, therefore, you censure me as in the wrong, suffer
me, I pray you, to be mistaken in company with such men.6
It is at about this time that Latin translations of John’s works began to appear.
The first were made in Italy between 415 and 419 by the Pelagian deacon Ani-
anus of Celada.7 He translated Chrysostom’s seven homilies on St Paul (remark-
ing in so doing that Chrysostom had not so much commented on Paul as
brought him back to life). Anianus is also credited with the translation of the
Homilies on Matthew and many other works.8 The Pelagians were quick to claim
the support of St John for their understanding of grace, sin, and human free-
dom. Anianus makes this clear in his prefatory remarks to the seven homilies
in which he specifies that his translations had been undertaken to oppose the
“Manicheans”—a clear dig at Augustine. Thus from the very earliest witnesses,
one sees Chrysostom being manipulated to support a particular theological or
ecclesiastical position. This is a pattern we shall see repeated in this survey of
his reception in the West.
In 415 Pelagius himself cited St John against St Augustine, implying that
John held freedom of will to be a sufficient weapon against sin. Augustine was
not convinced that the citation from John in any way supported such a posi-
tion.9 By 418, Augustine had reached the point where he felt it necessary to
6 Augustine, Letter 75 (CSEL 34.2 280f.). Translation taken from the Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers series. Presumably Jerome is referring to Chrysostom’s Commentary on Galatians,
Chapter 2. Jerome goes on to cite scripture “Lest, however, I should seem to rest my answer to
your reasoning wholly on the number of witnesses who are on my side, and to use the names
of illustrious men as a means of escaping from the truth, not daring to meet you in argument,
I shall briefly bring forward some examples from the Scriptures […].” In respect of Jerome’s
claim that wrongness is mitigated by illustrious company, one cannot fail but be reminded of
St Vincent of Lérins remark that he “would rather be wrong with Origen, than be right with
others” (Commonitorium 17.44). The irony here is that the “others” surely include Jerome, who
famously turned bitterly against Origen in his later years.
7 The location of Celada is unknown.
8 Sever Voicu warns of the “myth of Anianus”—i.e. the attribution of virtually all early Chrysos-
tom translations to him. See further his, “Le prime traduzioni latine di Crisostomo,” in Cris-
tianesimo Latino e cultura Greca sino al sec. IV (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum,
1993), 397–415. Anianus’ authorship of the translations of the homilies on Paul and Matthew
(at least of the first twenty-five) is, however, not in doubt.
9 On nature and grace 76 (PL 44 285): “He quotes also John, bishop of Constantinople, as saying
‘that sin is not a substance, but a wicked act.’ Who denies this? ‘And because it is not natural,
therefore the law was given against it, and because it proceeds from the liberty of our will.’
Who, too, denies this? However, the present question concerns our human nature in its cor-
rupted state; it is a further question also concerning that grace of God whereby our nature is
healed by the great Physician, Christ, whose remedy it would not need if it were only whole.
claim John not only as an authority who did not support the Pelagians but one
who positively refuted their doctrine. He makes this quite explicit in his fierce
attack on the Pelagian polemicist Julian of Eclanum. Augustine had, by this
time, familiarized himself with as many of John’s works as he could lay hands
on, including a number of inauthentic works already circulating under John’s
name—something that provides further to testimony to the power and author-
ity of his name in the West at this time. Augustine was able to correct the mis-
translations of his adversaries and throw other citations back at them.10 He also
refutes in detail Julian’s claim that John opposed the baptism of infants: “Let no-
one ever say such a thing of such a great man!” On the contrary, John is to be
included among the saints who have taught infant baptism: with Saints Inno-
cent, Cyprian, Basil, Hilary, Ambrose. These Augustine takes as his witnesses
against Julian, “or rather as our judges.” He ends, having produced copious cita-
tions from St John, by exclaiming: “See then to what kind of man, to what great
defender of the Christian faith and of this catholic teaching [on the baptism of
infants], you have presumed to impute your doctrine!”11
St John Cassian—no stranger to the Pelagian Controversy—was of course
one of Chrysostom’s foremost ambassadors in the West. After his famous
sojourn in the Egyptian desert, he and his companion Germanus joined John in
Constantinople. These Latin brothers were entrusted by John with the vital task
of managing the cathedral treasury, a task they performed with great efficiency
and integrity. Cassian was ordained deacon by John and went with Germanus
to Rome to plead John’s case shortly after his exile.12 Cassian kept John’s mem-
ory and authority alive in his writings against Nestorius, the next denizen of
Antioch to occupy the throne of Constantinople. In his On the Incarnation of
Christ written shortly before the Council of Ephesus, Cassian bids Nestorius to
pay heed to what John has written on the person of Christ, John who is “the
And yet your author defends it as capable of not sinning, as if it were sound, or as if its
freedom of will were self-sufficient.” Translation taken from the Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers series. Baur remarks laconically that Augustine must have been “sans doute un
peu étonné d’un tel adversaire, qu’il ne connaît pas encore très bien.” Saint Jean Chrysos-
tome et ses oeuvres dans l’histoire littéraire, 68.
10 This raises the tricky question of the level of Augustine’s Greek—a subject I do not pro-
pose to venture into here. It is, of course, perfectly possible that he had some linguistic
help with these particular texts. Aurelian of Carthage was a correspondent of St John and
may have assisted in the procurement of texts (a point made to me in conversation by
Guillaume Bardy in 2007, whom I duly thank).
11 Against Julian 1.1.6 (PL 44 654–665). Baur remarks (op. cit., 71), “Jamais hommage plus écla-
tant ne fut rendu à un grand homme par un meilleur panégyriste.”
12 Palladius, Dialogue 3.
148 plested
honour of the bishops of Constantinople, whose holy life obtained the reward
of martyrdom without the persecution of pagans.” He also reminds Nestorius
that he owes his election to the enduring love for John of the people of Con-
stantinople and exhorts them to hold fast to:
that John who like John the Evangelist was indeed a disciple of Jesus and
an Apostle; and so to speak ever reclined on the breast and heart of the
Lord. Remember him, I say. Follow him. Think of his purity, his faith, his
doctrine, and holiness. Remember him ever as your teacher and nurse,
in whose bosom and embraces you, as it were, grew up. Who was the
teacher in common both of you and of me: whose disciples and pupils
we are. Read his writings. Hold fast his instruction. Embrace his faith and
merits. For though to attain this is a hard and magnificent thing: yet even
to follow is beautiful and sublime. For in the highest matters, not merely
the attainment, but even the attempt to copy is worthy of praise. He then
should ever be in your minds and almost in your sight: he should live in
your hearts and in your thoughts.13
Perhaps the most important thing to note about all this is that it was quite
unparalleled in the East. Chrysostom is a universally acknowledged theolog-
ical authority in the West long before the same can be said of the East. We have
nothing like the same intensity of interest in Chrysostom in the Greek East at
this time—doubtless for political reasons. It is also very significant that it is
Latin writers who first record the formal cognomen “Chrysostomus.” This had,
of course, of course, been one of the many terms applied to John and other
great rhetors, but it is Facundus of Hermiane (North Africa) who is the first to
use it as a fixed title. Writing in Constantinople shortly before the Ecumenical
Council of 553CE, he speaks of “illud os aureum Constantinopolitani Joan-
nis.”14 Shortly afterwards, Pope Vigilius, also writing in Constantinople, speaks
of “John, Bishop of Constantinople, whom they call Chrysostomus.”15 The cog-
nomen is also used by Cassiodorus, sometime minister of Theodoric, in Gothic
Italy around 563CE. Cassiodorus, who had spent some twenty years in Con-
stantinople, devoted great energy to attempting to hold together the increas-
ingly divergent Greek and Latin worlds. One sign of this effort is his commis-
13 On the Incarnation of Christ 7.30–31 (CSEL 17) (tr. Gibson in the Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers series).
14 Pro defensione trium capitulorum 1.4.2 (PL 67 615) (“os aureum” being, of course, “golden
mouth”).
15 Constitutum de tribus capitulis 60.217 (CSEL 35 291).
sioning of several translations of Chrysostom’s works. A little later (c. 615 CE), St
Isidore of Seville refers to “St John of Constantinople, surnamed Chrysostom.”
The Latins seem to have pre-empted the Greeks in making the cognomen the
standard appellation of the saint.
In the troubled centuries that followed, references to Chrysostom diminish
somewhat. There are no further translations recorded between those commis-
sioned by Cassiodorus and the Twelfth Century. The vigorous struggle for the
legacy of Chrysostom during the Pelagian Controversy had no obvious sequel.
But Chrysostom was certainly not forgotten. Manuscripts continued to be kept
and copied in the monasteries as Baur’s survey of western monastic libraries
has indicated. Baur found some 485 manuscripts dating from the seventh to
fifteenth centuries in medieval monastic libraries. This is a significantly higher
haul than for any other Greek Father. The great Anglo-Saxon theologian Alcuin
of York (d. 804) wrote a Commentary on Hebrews almost entirely based on
Chrysostom’s commentary.16 Hincmar of Rheims (d. 882) cites John frequently
on the subject of free will in his treatise De Prædestinatione (857–858).17 Rathier
of Verona (d. 974), for his part, draws on St John’s teaching on wealth and
poverty.18
We see here that it is in the Carolingian period that knowledge of and inter-
est in Chrysostom begins to revive. This revival is reflected in the translation
work of Burgundio of Pisa. This highly polished and accomplished individual
accompanied Anslem of Havelberg to Constantinople in 1136 and took part
in the famous dialogue between Anselm and Nicetas of Nicomedeia. A con-
temporary chronicler tells us that Burgundio had translated many works of St
John Chrysostom whom he reported as having exegeted the whole of the Old
and New Testaments. The chronicle also records that Burgundio brought with
him to the Third Lateran Council (1179) his translations of Chrysostom’s com-
mentary on John and that he had also translated part of the commentary on
Genesis.19 These translations were evidently very popular, serving as the basis
of many of the medieval Latin manuscripts of Chrysostom.
Thomas Aquinas cited Chrysostom frequently, especially (as one would
expect) in his Catena Aurea or Golden Chain (his collection of patristic com-
mentaries on the Gospels). Thomas is also said to have declared that he would
prefer Chrysostom’s Commentary on Matthew (in Burgundio’s translation) to
16 PL 100 1031–1084.
17 PL 125 217f.
18 Baur, op. cit., 74.
19 Robert of Mons, Continuation of the Chronicle of Sigebert of Gembloux, Monumenta Ger-
maniae Historica (Scriptores (in Folio)), 6, 531.45–50.
150 plested
the whole city of Paris.20 For the Franciscans, Bonaventure loses nothing to
Thomas in his respect for Chrysostom, citing him, according to Baur, some 326
times in his works.
Thus by the High Middle Ages, Chrysostom is firmly established as a tow-
ering authority in the Latin world. Note that he is appealed to primarily as
an exegete and as a witness to orthodox doctrine—rather than as an exem-
plary preacher. Knowledge of Chrysostom was deepened and extended by the
influx of Greek scholars into the West following the Fall of Constantinople in
1453, many of whom undertook or inspired further translation work. In this
situation, it was inevitable that the legacy of Chrysostom would be disputed
between the Reformers and the Roman Catholic Church.
The Protestant reformers lagged very little behind the medieval Latins in
their admiration for Chrysostom. What is noticeably different is the way in
which they receive Chrysostom—not within the context of a Church tradition
but as providing backing for their own interpretations, and guidance for the
correct reading of Scripture. Martin Luther certainly valued Chrysostom very
highly, and quotes him repeatedly. However, one always gets the impression
that Chrysostom is being commended for agreeing with Luther, rather than vice
versa. Luther was certainly very ready to correct the great doctor when he felt
it necessary—where he finds Chrysostom has misunderstood Paul, for exam-
ple. On the more general question of patristic authority, Luther attacks those
who rely on either on their own reasonings or on the Fathers: both of these,
he says, can impede our direct access to the word of God in scripture—which
contains everything necessary for salvation. Scripture does not tell us we must
believe the Fathers21 and in any case Luther’s enemies, so he claims, do not
believe the Fathers but rather seek “to foist their own views onto the words
of the Fathers”—a fault Luther is not free from.22 The Fathers, moreover, can
often get things wrong, says Luther. In one passage, he goes so far as to speak
of Chrysostom as one who (with Jerome and Origen) as one of those “scornful
and frivolous saints who are caught up in their own speculations.”23
John Calvin displays a more profound approach to John’s work than does
Luther. Calvin gives us some of his most valuable reflections on the way to read
20 Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work (Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 140.
21 Answer to Latomus 8.98.27.
22 Answer to Latomus 8.57.20.
23 Luther’s Works 29 86. In his Table Talk, he is said to have referred to St John as “nur ein
Wesscher (only a gossip)”: Luther’s Works 54 34 [cited Margaret M. Mitchell, “The Archety-
pal Image: John Chrysostom’s Portraits of Paul,” JR 75 (1995): 15–43].
Scripture in his Preface to the Homilies of Chrysostom.24 Here, Calvin affirms

that the reading of the Fathers confers great benefits, especially in indicat-
ing the right way to read scripture, providing moral guidance, and offering
an insight into the (relatively) pure life of the Early Church. One must not
read the Fathers uncritically, but to reject them would be an act of consider-
able ingratitude. Sola scriptura does not, for Calvin, mean divorcing oneself
wholly from the patristic tradition. And among the Fathers, Calvin singles out
St John above all other exegetes, a mark of favour doubtless due to John’s
eschewal of the allegorical method of interpretation and preference for the
so-called “literal” method of exegesis. Here Calvin is concurring in the judge-
ment of the early reformer Martin Bucer who castigated those who ignored
the testimony of learned commentators both past and present and similarly
singled out Chrysostom as the most distinguished of biblical commentators
of the Early Church.25 Bucer engages with Chrysostom extensively in his own
biblical exegesis—sometimes rather critically. Calvin too had his differences
with Chrysostom especially on the issue of grace and human freedom. In this
domain, Augustine is much preferred.26 But Calvin does draw on Chrysostom
to support his understanding of the Eucharist.27 He is also unwilling to see in
Chrysostom the erroneous understanding of the Roman Catholics concerning
the “real presence” of Christ in consecrated elements of bread and wine. For
Calvin, Chrysostom is guilty only of immoderate language when he speaks in
very graphic terms of the reality of the sacrifice upon the altar in his On the
Priesthood.
In the course of the English Reformation the legacy of St John Chrysostom is
often appealed to. Thomas Cramner was excited to come across a manuscript
of the Letter to the Monk Caesarius, ascribed to St John. In this manuscript, the
author speaks of the nature of the bread remaining after consecration—a state-
ment Cramner immediately leapt on to support his own non-realist conception
of the Eucharist. He uses it in his Defence, a work which seeks to demonstrate
24 See Ian Hazlett, “Calvin’s Latin Preface to his Proposed French Edition of Chrysostom’s
Homilies: Translation and Commentary,” Studies in Church History Subsidia 8 (1991): 129–
138.
25 Metaphrasis et enarratio in Epistolam sancti Pauli ad Romanos (Basel: Perna, 1562), unpag-
inated preface.
26 It is Augustine who is, for Calvin, “the one whom we quote most frequently, as being the
best and most reliable witness of all antiquity” (Institutes 4.14.26). Chrysostom is singled
out as most egregious example of the patristic, and especially Greek patristic tendency to
exceed “due bounds” in their extolling of the power of the human will (Institutes 2.2.4).
27 E.g. Institutes 4.17.6 (the cardinal importance of faith in reception of the eucharist) and
4.17.5 (the necessity of frequent communion).
152 plested
that Cramner’s case is grounded on Scripture “and approved by the consent

of the most ancient doctors of the Church.” Again, it is the Fathers who are to
agree with Cramner and not vice versa. The Letter is, however, spurious, and in
any case the sentence that so interested Cramner was absent from versions of
the same text possessed by his adversaries. Cramner did, however, perpetuate
the memory of Chrysostom in the Church of England by including the “Prayer
of St Chrysostom” in the first ever English liturgy (1544). This prayer is included
at the end of the Litany and later found its way into the text for Morning Prayer
of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. In its 1662 format the prayer runs as follows:
Almighty God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to
make our common supplications unto thee; and dost promise, that when
two or three are gathered together in thy Name thou wilt grant their
requests; Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as
may be most expedient for them; granting us in this world knowledge of
thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. Amen.28
This prayer is, of course, taken from the third antiphon of the Divine Liturgy of
St John Chrysostom. It is a quite remarkable testament to John’s influence that
he should have such pride of place in the Anglican service-books.
For the remainder of my survey of the influence of St John in the West I shall
for the purposes of space restrict myself to England. There is some justice to
this restriction since it was in England that the complete works of Chrysos-
tom were first edited and published.29 This was the work of Sir Henry Savile,
who was, in his time, tutor in Greek to Queen Elisabeth I, Provost of Eton Col-
lege and Warden of Merton College, Oxford. Sir Henry was a learned, rich,
and well-connected man. He made full use of all these qualities in preparing
28 The 1544 version reads as follows: “Almighty God, which haste given us grace at this tyme
with one accorde to make our commune supplications unto the, and doost promise, that
whan two or thre be gathered in thy name, thou wilt graunt their requestes: fulfil nowe,
o Lord, the desires and petytions of thy servauntes, as maye be mooste expedient for
them, graunting us in this world knowledge of thy thruthe, and in the wordle to come lyfe
everlastynge. Amen.” In the Divine Liturgy (tr. Archimandrite Ephrem Lash) the prayer is
rendered: “You have given us grace to make these common and united prayers, and have
promised that when two or three agree in your name you will grant their requests; ful-
fil now the petitions of your servants as is expedient, granting us in this present age the
knowledge of your truth and in the age to come eternal life.”
29 We should not, however, forget that this work was followed by the editions of the Jesuit
Fronton Le Duc (Paris: 1636) and the Benedictine Bernard de Montfaucon (Paris: 1718–
1738).
his eight-volume edition of Chrysostom’s complete works, published at Eton

in 1612. Sir Henry scoured Europe for copies of manuscripts and proved him-
self a fine judge of variant and difficult readings. He spent prodigious sums
on the enterprise: the sources speak of between 8 and 25,000 gold pieces—a
vast amount. The achievement is magnificent and seems to have had no other
object than the advancement of learning in general and of the knowledge of
Chrysostom in particular. “There is,” says Savile in his preface, “none of the
Greek Fathers so devout, none better, none of superior judgement.” And, he
adds, there is “nothing he need say concerning the splendour of John’s oratory,
from which golden stream comes his name.” Sir Henry’s wife was, it seems, less
enamoured of John than was her husband. Indeed, we are told that at one point
she threatened to burn his manuscripts if he did not pay more attention to her.
Apart from the Greek edition of Savile, many English translations were
made and published from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. I shall men-
tion only two, for the sake of illustration. The first is a translation made by the
seventeenth-century scholar and diarist John Evelyn and published in London
in 1659 (thus during England’s brief period as a republic). The book is entitled
the Golden Book of St John Chrysostom Concerning the Education of Children
and is translated from a manuscript discovered by Combefis in 1656. The pur-
pose of the translation appears perfectly innocent, merely to make available
a work containing much wisdom on the proper pedagogy of children. More
obviously polemical is an eighteenth-century translation of the six books On
the Priesthood by Henry Hollier in London in 1728. In his prologue, the transla-
tor begins by affirming “the unanimous suffrage of the learned, that as [John]
was the most eloquent of all the Fathers of the Greek Church, so his treatise of
the priesthood is the most eloquent of all his numerous works.” Speaking quite
frankly, Hollier admits that his purpose in making this translation is to uphold
“the excellency of the episcopal commission” against certain “wretches” who
would deny it. Fathers such as John demonstrate the antiquity of the episcopal
ministry, as maintained in the Church of England. The “primitive church,” he
argues comes second only to scripture in the guidance it provides for church life
and governance. Indeed, it is Hollier’s view that, “the more the members of this
church are made acquainted with the writings of the Ancients, the higher value
they must place on their happiness in their communion […] I am persuaded
that if, at the first, the most valuable monuments of antiquity had been set forth
in the vulgar tongue, it [would] had been an ample defence of the Reformation.”
The Fathers, in other words, expose the novelty of Roman doctrines and the
unprecedented nature of the governance of the Reformed Church of Geneva.
Chrysostom is thus something of a “proto-Anglican,” a forerunner of the Church
of England which is, “the envy of Rome, the glory of the Reformation.”
154 plested
It is indeed noteworthy just how far the Church of England adopted Chrysos-
tom as a kind of unofficial patron. The Second Book of Homilies (1562–1563)
officially appointed to be read in churches, refers to John as “the great Clerk
and godly Preacher”—an unusually warm description of a Church Father in
that very sober collection of sermons For many Anglicans, Chrysostom rep-
resented a perfect counterweight to both Rome and the radical reformers, a
vindication of the via media (middle way) pursued by the Church of England.
This was also the case for John Wesley who much valued Chrysostom for his
teaching on holiness and perfection and thus as a support against Calvinism.30
The idea of the via media was, however, always a difficult line to tread. Many
Anglicans found themselves dissatisfied with the “Broad Church,” the church of
compromise that was neither fully reformed nor fully catholic. Many left it alto-
gether, for Rome and the Reform, but still more remained within it, pressing it
to its limits on both sides, high and low. One notable figure in this respect, with
whom I shall end my survey is John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801–1890)—
recently declared a Saint by the Roman Catholic Church. For many years, New-
man had been a firm advocate of the via media and had struggled to affirm the
properly catholic character of the Church of England. Like many before him,
he looked back to the Fathers as buttresses of his position. Looking back in
this way, deeply immersed in the Early Church, he began to realize that it was
not the Fathers that should be supporting him, but rather he that should allow
himself to be shaped by them. For Newman, this change of direction led him to
embrace the Church of Rome—but that is another story. What is most impor-
tant for our purposes is to note the sheer depth of Newman’s attachment to St
John, an attachment that exceeds that which he displays for any other Father.
Towards the end of a long piece on Chrysostom, Newman ponders the source
of his fervent attachment:31
Whence is this devotion to St. John Chrysostom, which leads me to dwell

upon the thought of him, and makes me kindle at his name, when so many
other great Saints […] command indeed my veneration, but exert no per-
30 In his Advice to Clergy (1756) he asks: “Can any who spend several years in those seats of
learning [Oxford and Cambridge], be excused if they do not add to that reading of the
Fathers? the most authentic commentators on Scripture, as being both nearest the foun-
tain, eminently endued with that Spirit by whom all Scripture was given. It will be easily
perceived, I speak chiefly of those who wrote before the council of Nicea. But who could
not likewise desire to have some acquaintance with those that followed them with St.
Chrysostom, Basil, Austin, and above all, the man of a broken heart, Ephraim Syrus.”
31 This account was first published the Rambler (1859–1860) and later in idem, Historical
Sketches 2 (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906), 217–302.
sonal claim upon my heart? Many holy men have died in exile, many holy
men have been successful preachers; and what more can we write upon St.
Chrysostom’s monument than this, that he was eloquent and that he suf-
fered persecution? He is not an Athanasius, expounding a sacred dogma
with a luminousness which is almost an inspiration […] Nor is he Gregory
or Basil, rich in the literature and philosophy of Greece, and embellishing
the Church with the spoils of heathenism. Again, he is not an Augus-
tine, devoting long years to one masterpiece of thought […] He has not
trampled upon heresy, nor smitten emperors, […] nor knit together the
portions of Christendom, nor founded a religious order, nor built up the
framework of doctrine, nor expounded the science of the Saints; yet I love
him, as I love David or St. Paul.
How am I to account for it? […] It is not force of words, nor cogency of
argument, nor harmony of composition, nor depth or richness of thought,
which constitutes his power,—whence, then, has he this influence, so
mysterious, yet so strong?
I consider St. Chrysostom’s charm to lie in his intimate sympathy and
compassionateness for the whole world, not only in its strength, but in its
weakness; in the lively regard with which he views every thing that comes
before him, taken in the concrete […] Possessed though he be by the fire
of divine charity, he has not lost one fibre, he does not miss one vibration,
of the complicated whole of human sentiment and affection […] It is this
observant benevolence which gives to his exposition of Scripture its chief
characteristic. He is known in ecclesiastical literature as the expounder,
above all others, of its literal sense […] there have been many literal expos-
itors, but only one Chrysostom. It is St. Chrysostom who is the charm of
the method, not the method that is the charm of St. Chrysostom.
The history of St John’s influence in the West is a long and varied one. I trust I
have given some sense, at least, of the scope and richness of that influence. In
the West John was celebrated as a teacher of doctrine, exegete, and preacher
(in that order). As we have seen, he had (and has) a remarkable ability to speak
directly and freshly across the centuries to many and varied Christian souls.
The West has ceded nothing to the East in her admiration of the great John.
In this respect he has indeed, as the Troparion appointed for his feast puts it,
“illumined the universe”—τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐφώτισεν.
chapter 9
Divine Light and Salvific Illumination in St.

Symeon the New Theologian’s Hymns of Divine Eros
John A. McGuckin
St Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) is one of the most extraordinary and
rhapsodic mystics of the Eastern Church. His Hymns of Divine Eros,1 composed
chiefly in exile in the latter part of his life,2 stand at the acme of his spiritual
writing and, as such, constitute not only an important monument of Orthodox
theology, but also one of the most significant texts of the entire Christian mysti-
cal tradition: though it is a treasure still largely unknown to the outside world.3
His spiritual school is, in many respects, quite distinctive, though he himself
characterized it, especially in his Catecheses (or morning lectures delivered to
his monastic community at St. Mamas, Constantinople),4 as a highly traditional
restatement of the ancient monastic charisms of prayer. We might say that in
terms of his explicit sources, or literarily speaking, his teaching is highly tra-
1 Generally translated in English to date, as Hymns of Divine Love. First translated under that
title by George Maloney [George A. Maloney, Hymns of Divine Love by St. Symeon the New
Theologian (Denville, New Jersey: Dimension Books, 1976; repr. 1999)]; also see Daniel Griggs,
Divine Eros: Hymns of Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Popular Patristics Series (New York:
St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011). For the general reader’s convenience I will here quote the
Hymns from Fr. Maloney’s translation with reference first to the Hymn number followed by M
and the page number of the Denville 1976 edition (the 1999 edition has the same pagination). I
myself am currently preparing a new English edition of the Hymns, edited with commentary,
for publication in 2021.
2 Symeon may have begun aspects of his song-writing in his early monastic years, as some have
read Niketas Stethatos to imply in his Vita Symeonis 37, lines 11–12; but this is, in fact, merely
a generic reference to the saint’s forms of asceticism (and illumination) in terms of his writ-
ing discipline. In the Vita 111, Niketas more accurately places the composition of the Hymns
at the time “his tongue became a tongue of fire” when he retired to seclusion at St. Marina’s
Hesychasterion in late exile. The critical edition is: Richard P.H. Greenfield, ed., The Life of St
Symeon the New Theologian: Niketas Stethatos, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 20 (Cam-
bridge Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 2013).
3 Further see: John A. McGuckin, “A Neglected Masterpiece of the Christian Mystical Tradition:
The Hymns of Divine Eros by the Byzantine Poet Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022),”
Spiritus 5 (2005): 182–202.
4 By the Xylokerkos gate of the city’s outer wall (Belgrad Kapisi) not far from the Stoudium and
St. Diomedes’ of Jerusalem.

divine light and salvific illumination 157
ditional; but this is not to say much, since those references he makes to the
great masters of the past collectively constitute very little. Because of a distinct
lack of formal theological preparation before his monastic and priestly career,
Symeon was a theologian who predominantly tended to speak from the heart
and soul. It is this constant return to a master theme of his (namely that the
true theologian must speak out of a fervent heart that has been perceptively
(aisthetos) enlightened by the Holy Spirit) which makes his body of work truly
original, distinctive, and (as many of his contemporaries recognized by first giv-
ing him the title of Neos Theologos)5 radically challenging to many aspects of
traditional Orthodox culture. Themes in his work concerning ecstasy, divine
illumination6 experienced in an intensely subjective manner,7 dramatically
heartfelt repentance,8 and the most profound dependence on the guidance of
the spiritual father,9 were all elements that he stressed in such a forcible way
that he caused controversy throughout his own career as a Higumen, resulting
in a riot among his community and eventually a sentence of exile delivered
against him by the standing synod of Constantinople. The ostensible reason
for this was the elaborate festival and cult he had instituted of his own spiritual
father, Symeon Eulabes of the Stoudium monastery. This synodical condem-
nation his later disciple, Niketas Stethatos (at least)10 says was rescinded soon
afterwards: though the saint refused to return to the imperial city.
5 The “New Theologian” was originally meant as a disparagement by his opponents, suggest-
ing that he was an innovator. His later friends and disciples turned the criticism around
and suggested it meant he was a new arrival in the company of the two great early theolo-
gians, St John and St Gregory.
6 Further see: John A. McGuckin, “The Notion of Luminous Vision in 11th Century Byzan-
tium: Interpreting the Biblical and Theological Paradigms of St. Symeon the New The-
ologian,” in Margaret Mullett and Anthony Kirby, eds., Work & Worship at Theotokos Ever-
getis, BBTT 6.2 (Belfast: Queens University Press, 1997), 90–123; also idem, “St. Symeon
the New Theologian (d. 1022): Byzantine Theological Renewal in Search of a Precedent,”
in R.W. Swanson, ed., The Church Retrospective, SCH 33 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), 75–
90.
7 Further see: John A. McGuckin, “Seeing Divine Things in Byzantine Christianity,” in Jeffrey
B. Pettis and Jared Calaway, eds., Seeing the God: Ways of Envisioning the Divine in Ancient
Mediterranean Religion, PPRT 5 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2013), 223–238.
8 Further see: John A. McGuckin, “Покаяние как богообщение в ‘Гимнах божественной
любви’ преподобного Симеона Нового Богослова (Repentance as Divine Communion
in St. Symeon the New Theologian’s Hymns of Divine Eros),” in Hilarion Alfeyev, ed., Пре-
подобный Симеон Новый Богослов и его духовное наследие (St. Symeon the New Theolo-
gian and His Spiritual Legacy), Patristic Studies and Translations (Moscow: St. Cyril and
Methodius Theological Institute, 2017), 128–145 [in Russian].
9 Further see John Turner, St Symeon the New Theologian and Spiritual Fatherhood (Leiden:
Brill, 1990).
10 Niketas was only 16 when Symeon died, and never formed part of his monastic commu-
158 mcguckin
The book of Hymns dates substantively from the time after Symeon’s grow-
ing troubles with the imperial court, beginning in 1003, culminated in his depo-
sition as Higumen in 1005. The imperial administration of Basil II was intent
on his public disgrace, for various reasons, and used the Patriarchal Synkel-
los, bishop Stephen of Nicomedia, as its agent.11 Having manipulated Symeon’s
trial on canonical grounds, the court ensured that the saint was placed for
a time under house arrest, punctuated by police raids on his monastery at
St. Mamas.12 Niketas Stethatos typically describes this as a spiritual season of
“longed for hesychia”13 after Symeon had willingly passed over the leadership of
the monastery. Niketas’ Vita Symeonis, tries at every turn to reduce all and every
suspicion of doctrinal, canonical or political irregularity in the life of the hero
he is trying officially to rehabilitate (as a “Stoudite” martyr),14 so as to facilitate
processions to Symeon’s relics and shrine at Chrysopolis which many years later
nity. He adopts Symeon retrospectively as his father, has dreams about him, collects his
writings, attributes titles to the various sections of the works, and composes his Vita (when
he himself was the higumen of the Stoudium) as a preparation to bring the saint’s cultus
back to the imperial city. Themes in the Vita of how the Patriarch had soon repented of
the sentence, and even offered Symeon the position of an Archbishop, should be read with
some suspicion.
11 Stephen was a confidant of Emperor Basil II (Bulgaroktonos 958–1025). The imperial court
had already used him (c. 976) as an important negotiator, renowned as he was for what
Cedrenos calls his saintly and gracious manner (see Cedrenos, History. PG, 122. 153). The
imperial family had longstanding differences with the aristocratic clans of Asia Minor, to
which Symeon’s family belonged, and these broke out openly once Basil entered on his
majority. His courtly policy was consistently directed towards reducing the influence of
the rural Asiatic aristocracy in the imperial city. He also seems to have had personal scores
to settle against Symeon’s family, who had surely bankrolled the latter’s rapid promotion
to be Higumen and Ktitor (re-founder) of the St. Mamas monastic complex. The letters
and treatises passing between Symeon and Stephen are open for all to see, and testify to a
certain extent to the clash between charismatic and institutional religion: but they have
often been too narrowly interpreted, because commentators have not read between the
political lines to understand that a traditional Byzantine way to mock the emperor was to
do it by proxy.
12 They were looking (unsuccessfully) for the large sums of money that he regularly spent on
the annual week long festivals (including gifts of cash to the city poor who attended) that
he celebrated to mark the feastday of his departed Elder Symeon Eulabes. This lavish fes-
tival was (along with the controversy he caused by painting Eulabes’ icon and venerating
it) basically a canonization service for his Elder.
13 Vita Symeonis, 111.
14 He makes out all the causes of controversy in St. Symeon’s life to be (a) his defence of the
holy icons, and (b) his representation of zealous sanctity in the face of a bureaucratic and
jealous religious establishment. Claiming Symeon as a true Studite martyr in this respect,
he wishes to reinstate the cultus of Symeon in Constantinople thirty years after his death.
The Vita itself is part of the process thus to canonize Symeon.
he himself was organizing from the imperial city. The Vita itself is thus part of
the process (effectively) to canonize Symeon. Niketas was himself, of course,
the Higumen of the Stoudite monastery at this stage, and highly favoured at
court; but even so it was rhetorically necessary not to be seen casting asper-
sions on the judgements of past emperors.
On January 3, 1009 the court augmented the synodical deposition from office
by ordering a total confiscation of Symeon’s goods and imposed an (apparently)
lifelong term of exile. He was unceremoniously cast ashore at Paloukiton, a
village near Chrysopolis on the opposite bank of the Bosphorus straits facing
Constantinople, wearing only the clothes he stood in. This local exile, within
sight of the imperial city, was meant to be chiefly a matter of public disgrace.
Although he was dropped there penniless, within a very short time Symeon
had adopted the abandoned Oratory of St. Marina which was there, rebuilt it,
and also purchased another respectable property back in the capital city, the
Church of the Theotokos and its Metochion15 at the Constantinopolitan dis-
trict Ta Eugeniou.16 Stethatos’ Vita Symeonis names the Senator Christopher
Phagouras17 as having been one of his deep-pocketed benefactors, and notes
Symeon’s strong support among several other highly placed Senators in the
capital.18 The Metochion of the Theotokos church soon became the renewed
centre for the cult of St. Symeon Eulabes in the Great City, and the lavish festiv-
ities were carried on there over eight days:19 with numerous clergy from Hagia
Sophia in attendance;20 a sign of the Patriarchate’s tacit acceptance. We are not
told that Symeon himself was in attendance there or whether he remained (in
an enduring exile) at his church in Chrysopolis.
These lavish celebrations were occasions, as were the earlier celebrations
based at St. Mamas when Symeon led them personally, for many public gifts
(eulogia) and common meals. All of this meal-giving, and gift-offering was a
typical Byzantine social networking pattern of that era. It was how Symeon’s
circle of disciples (many of them high ranking) continued their mutual alle-
giances and their support of their monastic teacher. Although Symeon was a
Higumen with a close following of monks, both he and Symeon Eulabes before
15 A smaller monastic complex that served as a headquarters in town for an outlying monas-
tery. This became St. Marina’s base of operations directed by Symeon from afar.
16 This was a high class area in which to have a dependency; near the Prosphoriou harbour,
and close to the Hagia Sophia complex.
19 Marking it as a claimed “major rank” festival in the calendar.
160 mcguckin
him, had been more noted as spiritual masters for a wider lay society. At the
core of these festal celebrations, however, were also church services. In Ortho-
doxy, the more lavish the liturgical festival, the more was the need to extend
the Typikon of appointed texts to be read (the script as it were of the liturgi-
cal services) throughout the day which was based (like the Holy Week services
to this day) on the standard bare skeleton of the Offices of the Hours. I sus-
pect that it was this para-liturgical amplification of the church services during
this week of the festival that was the occasion of the composition of some of
the Hymns. Not all of them would work in a liturgical setting, doubtless, but
many of them match the inspirational level of the greatest of the hymnogra-
phers of the ancient church. Others represent a later Byzantine remodeling
of the old patristic era custom (seen in Gregory the Theologian’s circle) of
close colleagues attending for a symposium meal (often the festal celebration
of a saint) during which elegant compositions would be performed at table.
Symeon twice refers to Gregory by name in the hymns21 and some of that
Father’s rhapsodic poems celebrating the divine light of God may well have
served as early models for him22 for Gregory’s poems and orations were com-
monly used in Symeon’s era as standard examples of rhetorical structuring in
the schools. Symeon’s own Greek style, however is simpler and much less clas-
sical in form. Gregory gives a very famous account of his own vision of divine
light (like Symeon’s story, this is synonymous with the former’s “conversion” to
the monastic lifestyle) when he noetically (“in a vision of the night”) saw the
heavenly realm:
A long while back, I ripped my spirit from this world to wed it with
the shining spirits of heaven. The ascentive Nous lifted me far from the
flesh, to place me above and hide me in the secret places of the heavenly
dwellings where the light of the Trinity shone upon my eyes: that light of
the high throne, brighter than anything I have ever known, which radi-
ates an ineffable and harmonious brilliance. It is the principle (arche) of
all those things which the order of time closes off from heaven.23
As the common substrate to Symeon’s and Gregory’s claim for ascentive illumi-
nated vision, of course, stand the classic biblical archetypes of radiant epiph-
21 Hymns 19 and 23. M 87 & 122.

22 Such as St Gregory’s, Poem—On His Own Life. Text and English translation in Konstantinos
Trypanis, Greek Poetry from Homer to Seferis (London: Faber & Faber, 1981), 410.
23 St. Gregory the Theologian, Poem Concerning His Own Affairs. PG 37.985. vv. 195–201.
any: the Exodus Sinai narrative and the Evangelical Transfiguration stories. The
influence of these narratives on the tropes Symeon uses, I have discussed else-
where.24
Taken collectively, the Hymns sum up and crystallize all that Symeon Eula-
bes (and Symeon himself) stood for in terms of their school’s spiritual tradition.
An ecstatic and zealous spiritual inspiration deeply permeates them. One key
motif of that is that the Spirit of God must be sensed perceptively (aisthetos)
and powerfully, or the life of the disciple is not spiritually authentic. Another
is the heavy stress on the necessary self-abandonment and trust which char-
acterizes true discipleship: the monk or layperson wholly depending on the
intercession of the living saintly Elder, and each soul learning from this obe-
dient dependency, the sense of the total abandonment it must have towards,
and within, Christ himself, whose spirit-filled agent the Elder is. Much of this
presupposes the Grand Narrative Symeon supplies, and Niketas synopsizes,25
which recounts how he himself had fled for refuge to the Stoudium monastery
in times of political turmoil when his own political career (and life) was threat-
ened as a young courtier26 and how he had a vision in the monastic cell in which
he was praying, of his Elder Symeon Eulabes radiating a brilliant and blinding
light that slowly revealed an even deeper radiance before which it stood (that
of Christ himself). In a very real sense, therefore, the themes of radiant illumi-
nation, and the spiritual intercession of the Elder, are mutually and inseparably
intertwined. The regular moments in the Hymns which depict Symeon’s own
experience of divine radiance are not only autobiographical, therefore, but are
clearly meant to reinforce this call for obedience and devotion to the master
from the circle of disciples (the congregation present for the recitation or per-
formance of the hymn). The Hymns explain why Symeon has inherited the
mantle of the saintly Eulabes. Just as he once initiated the younger Symeon,
so now Symeon himself stands as the intercessor and initiator for the circle of
friends and disciples who attend for the performance of the hymns. Several of
these people, one presumes, would have been original members of the circle of
Symeon Eulabes.
24 McGuckin, “The Notion of Luminous Vision in 11th Century Byzantium.” For an analysis of
this poem see: John A. McGuckin, St Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (New
York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 62–75.
25 Symeon’s own conversion story which must have been very familiar to his circle. It is given
in Stethatos’ Vita Symeonis, 5.
26 For a fuller background see John A. McGuckin, “St. Symeon the New Theologian and
Byzantine Monasticism,” in Anthony Bryer and Mary Cunningham, ed., Mount Athos and
Byzantine Monasticism (Aldershot: Variorum Press, 1996), 17–35.
162 mcguckin
Symeon’s writings give several other accounts of luminous apparitions or

experiences, over the course of his life.27 Hymn 55 actually tries to give a taxon-
omy of them, speaking of their increasing brilliance: what begins as a “glimpse
of a ray of light,” becomes a “flashing brightness,” then a “cloud of fire.” Other
descriptions of seemingly different occasions of luminous vision are found
throughout his Catecheses. But in what follows here, I wish only to look at the
theme of illumination as it appears within the text of the Hymns.
That book is now comprised of fifty eight authentic hymns in a rich variety
of metres, numbering ten thousand seven hundred lines of verse. A small part
of the collation which Niketas Stethatos himself made of the hymns, is out of
place. We should perhaps omit Hymn 21, which is really a letter of apologia to
Stephen of Nicomedia, and also Hymn 5 which is a basic Monk’s Alphabet.28
Stethatos has also personally supplied synopsis titles to each one, which are
of varying degrees of usefulness. Niketas made his collation of the manuscript
hymns sometime between 1035 and 1090, some twenty to seventy years after
their original composition. So neither the titles nor the relative placement of
hymns in the corpus can be expected to yield us much clue to the global intent
of St. Symeon himself: and indeed reading the Hymns we often find repetitions,
circularity, and lack of continuity of development from one piece to the next. It
strikes me, at least, as being a body of hymnographic work written sporadically
over a number of years, where the author, much like a poet today, envisages
each unity separately, but often attacks the same key moments of his expe-
rience from slightly different angles of approach. In this they are not so far
different form that other great body of ecclesiastical hymnody, absorbed deep
into the mind-stream by every observant monastic, the 150 Psalms themselves.
It is also surely Niketas who has also given them the collective title, which
gives the translator a puzzle at the outset. He calls them: The Loves (erotes) of
Divine Hymns of our Great and Holy Father Symeon the New Theologian Priest
and Higumen of the Monastery of Saint Mamas at the Xerokerkos (Gate).29 This
has normally been rendered as the Hymns of Divine Love, which blandly avoids
the striking way the title positions the hymns as Songs of Eros—the love of
deep passion and commitment, not just the “kindly” love of agape. The title
would be better rendered as The Book of Deep Love Songs to God. For conve-
nience’s sake I will refer to them as the Hymns of Divine Eros. By giving them
this title of Erotes Niketas probably wishes to evoke the Dionysian spiritual
27 Further see McGuckin, “The Notion of Luminous Vision in 11th Century Byzantium.”
28 The critical edition is: Johannes Koder, ed. Hymnes: Syméon le Nouveau Theologien (tomes
i, ii), SC 156, 174 (Paris: Cerf, 1969–1971). Text in Greek and French.
29 The ms. calls it Xerokerkos but Xylokerkos is surely meant.
tradition where he often places his mentor St. Symeon. And indeed Symeon
himself often echoes the mysterious Dionysius: a treatment already elegantly
given by His Grace Bishop Dr. Golitzin in 2002.30
Dionysius the Areopagite speaks of a certain Hierotheos who was his teacher
in the ways of mystical prayer,31 and goes on to give citations32 of this mas-
ter hymnographer, who is supposed to have composed a Book of Love Songs
(Erotikoi Hymnoi). Like much else in Dionysius, the identity of the secret mas-
ter is lost in mists, so too his book of mystical hymns which is an allegedly33
lost treasure. Niketas knows the allusions and certainly takes them seriously. He
himself frequently adopts Dionysian mystical terminology. In giving Symeon’s
hymns this title (ton theion hymnon oi erotes) he thus wishes to fix Symeon
in the Dionysian tradition, and to suggest that the hymn book composed
by the New Theologian stands as a worthy restitution of the lost hymns of
Hierotheos.34
Because the Hymns mention so regularly the experience of divine light, and
because Symeon makes it very clear to the reader that he does not mean this as
just a literary trope35 rather as a real and personal experience that changed his
life in a dramatic way: then the general reader has always had his or her atten-
tion veered towards this aspect of the work. This is quite understandable. It is
the most dramatic and “attention-grabbing” part of the narrative. Indeed it is
certainly the case that this experience of divine light is meant to be a highpoint
of what Symeon is trying to get across. We read the work of great mystics and
we want to hear of the ecstasy. But this reader-response pattern often masks
or occludes what the text is actually saying. For Symeon presents the divine
light not simply as an ecstatic and joy-making sensation; but primarily as a rad-
ical abandonment of his life, a deep-seated repentance and reorientation. The
30 Alexander Golitzin, “Il corpo di Cristo: Simeone il Nuovo Teologo sulla vita spirituale e la
chiesa gerarchica,” in Sabino Chialà et al., eds., Simeone il Nuovo Teologo e il monachesimo
a Costantinopoli (Qiqajon: Monastero di Bose, 2003), 255–288. English translation: “The
Body of Christ: Saint Symeon the New Theologian on Spiritual Life and the Hierarchical
Church,” in Basil Lourié and Andrei Orlov, eds., The Theophaneia School: Jewish Roots of
Eastern Christian Mysticism (St. Petersburg: Byzantinorossica, 2007 [reprint: Piscataway,
NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009]), 106–127.
31 Dionysius, The Divine Names. 3.2.
32 Dionysius, The Divine Names. 4.115–117.
33 Several scholars presume they never existed in the first place: simply part of a pseude-
pigraphon giving itself a deeper imagined context—a back-story.
34 Further on the Dionysian connections see Koder’s comments in SC 156 (Paris: Cerf, 1969),
53–64.
35 In places, he also does use the concept as a literary trope of course—to stand for the divine
illumination of soul that all Christians hearing of this must aspire to themselves.
164 mcguckin
first vision of light came to him as a refugee taking shelter with Symeon Eula-
bes in 969, crouched in a little cupboard next to his mentor’s cell (for there
was no room for him at the Stoudium). He saw his father standing in light and
understood gradually the greater light of Christ behind Eulabes which the lat-
ter was mediating to him. All of this he later presents as something of a sorrow
since it did not result in his own radical repentance (what he understands to
be his monastic profession). A second vision of the light of Christ initiated him
into the monastic life proper when his own political career was ruthlessly ter-
minated in 977 when Basil II took over his own political administration. This
strongly suggests that the experience of light is most closely linked to the theol-
ogy of repentance. This theme I have expounded elsewhere at greater length.36
It is something that is a clear motif in the Hymns, but rather than say the
theology of repentance is more significant than the description of divine illu-
mination, or vice versa, it would be better to understand that Symeon sees the
two things as varied aspects of the same economy of divine energy at work in
the Cosmos.
What Symeon means by the approach of the divine light to the believer (him
in the first instance, as modelling it, and us as potential invitees to the experi-
ence) is first and foremost that God radiates his salvation to all the Cosmos, all
the time, in the form of the divine energies. This is the economy of Salvation
that culminates, for sentient beings, in the Incarnation of the Logos as Man,
and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church as sanctifying power. This is
why Symeon describes several times how the light is that of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Spirit.37 The same light, in a variegated economy reaching
us. But it is an economy of divine grace and presence always drawing all life
towards itself, since it is the source of all that is. For sentient beings, Symeon
presents the enwrapment in light as the highest symbol of how a believer can
make the conscious choice to stand within God’s economy, noetically and expe-
rientially, unlike the rest of the cosmos which receives it unwittingly. God’s
life-giving energy falls on all created being: just as the sunlight falls on the earth
and all it contains. But to believers, God also calls out to turn in consciousness
to realize what is happening here: and in realizing the wonderment of it, to
commit to turning towards the light personally, electively, and in passionately-
felt agreement to God’s outreach. For Symeon such is the goal, the end or telos,
of the human condition.
36 See McGuckin, “Repentance as Divine Communion in St. Symeon the New Theologian’s
Hymns of Divine Eros.”
37 Hymn 12. M 39; Hymn 21. M 106; Hymn 29. M 156; Hymn 45. M 233; Hymn 55. M 282.
In Hymn 53 Symeon begins by lamenting that God has seemingly withdrawn

his light from the eyes of his soul, and he begs the Lord to return in mercy, not
to “close the door of the wedding hall against me.”38 Christ is then depicted as
answering him, and explaining that he has never withdraw the light. The para-
dox is unravelled by a long and elegant song on the salvation of the world by
God’s creative light:
I was light even before I created all the things you see. I am everywhere
and was everywhere … without being united with any thing, still I was
with all …. I was in all without being there, and I was in the midst of all
visible things, animate and inanimate.39
Following Gregory the Theologian’s doctrine of Man as a composite being,

halfway between angels and animals, Symeon nuances it to conclude that, as
far as the animals are concerned, Man is an immaterial being in the qual-
ity of the consciousness he possesses; while from the angelic point of view
Man’s awareness of God is such that he appears to them almost wholly sen-
sate (like the animals).40 This is the peculiar paradox of Humanity’s ontology
and the particular problem the Race has in attempting to “see” God; to look
upon him (whom even the angels cannot gaze upon easily) through a lim-
ited consciousness. It was this limit of being that led Mankind to sin and fall
away from the divine glory, which Adam, naturally, was able to gaze upon.41
But in this fall he immediately “became blind and was covered with the dark-
ness of death.”42 This is why Christ answers Symeon’s complaint, in Hymn
53, that he cruelly hides himself, by pointing out that it was sin that made
Man try to hide himself from God. But since this hiding was a contradiction
of the entire purpose of humankind’s being, the material and suffering life
still remained motivated by a naturally ascentive soul43 and, therefore, a spir-
itually blind humanity had entered into an unnatural condition.44 For this
reason God the Word incarnated to allow the divine light to be seen once
more:
38 Hymn 53. M 268.

39 Hymn 53. M 268.
40 Hymn 53. M 269.
41 Hymn 53. M 271.
42 Hymn 53. M 270.
43 Hymn 38. M 201.
44 Hymn 53. M 270.
166 mcguckin
See what desire I had to be seen by men, as to wish to become man, and
to be seen visibly …. I really do shine brilliantly, but you do not see me.45
Again following the guideline of Gregory the Theologian’s renowned Oration

27, Symeon teaches this divine vision can now return only through the purifi-
cation of the soul.46 To make “the soul white as snow” is the prior condition, but
it does not produce the vision of God per se. The latter is solely a gift of the Holy
Spirit who visits the fervent believer whose purity has shown his willing zeal:
Even when you have done all this and well purified yourself … you will
not see the Archetype;47 you will not comprehend him, unless he will be
revealed to you through the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit teaches everything
(John 14:26), shining in an ineffable light, and he will show you in a noetic
way all the noetic realities, as much as you can see … according to the
purity of your soul.48
But all those who insist on living according to the flesh alone, are those whom
the Spirit designates as “deaf, blind and even dead.”49 If they have not received
the Spirit, then:
their eyes have not been opened. They do not see the divine light. Not
being able to do this they remain perfectly deaf. But such as these, tell
me, how can they even be called Christians?50
Since it is the human telos: the goal and entire point of human existence on
this earth; the experience of the divine light cannot be relegated to being some
exotic experience of a few random saints. It has to be posited as the funda-
mental reason human beings exist. It is, in these intimations from Symeon,
tantamount to the possession of the Holy Spirit; that which makes the Chris-
tian. We also note that this light is perceived “noetically”: which is closest in
modern parlance to the word “spiritually.” It is not a material light (even though
it may emit a radiance seen by material creatures). Symeon is not saying, then, if
we do not see the light with our material pupils, we cannot be Christians; what
45 Hymn 53. M 271. See also Hymn 32. M 84–85.

46 Hymn 44. M 227.
47 Whose image we are.
48 Hymn 44. M 228.
49 Hymn 44. M 229; Hymn 45. M 23; Hymn 50. M 233–234.
50 Hymn 44. M 230; Hymn 58. M 283.
he is insisting on, is that the entire Christ-life is a progressive entrance into the
divine light that surrounds the peculiar spiritual ontology of a human being. If
a person refuses to admit this, and does not spend their existence penetrating
further into the experience of the light of God’s salvific presence (until such a
pitch as it becomes utterly “real” for that person) then the entire point of being
alive has been frustrated and such a being is an ontological contradiction: a liv-
ing being who is dead. The awareness of the divine light is the whole point of
being alive. This is why Symeon strongly insists, again and again, that if we did
not see the divine light within this earthly condition (namely, understand our
divine ontology and the ongoing call from God to enter back into our union
with him) we ought not to presume we shall enjoy the vision automatically in
some heavenly condition after life is ended.51
This, one of his most radical “shock statements” for his hearers (if you do
not see the light you are dead)52 is not only meant to provide the spur to repen-
tance for his hearers, but to underline the equally dramatic statement that the
conscious choice of divine light is synonymous with repentance. It is repentant
awareness that understands God’s call to salvation, lodged in the human heart,
as its primary ontological compass-setting. Repentance, for Symeon, begins
with desire: the eros of the soul. God is the “natural” desire for all souls, and
nothing can exceed that love. Sadly, Symeon goes on, very few attain to the state
where they can see this true state of affairs. Sinners, whose disordered desires
(pathemata) have badly obscured the “true north” of the heart’s inner moral
compass are unable to see the orientating light; the eros for God is such a dim
flicker it cannot light the spark of a fire. Christ’s Spirit only illumines each saint
according to the degree of their faith and purification.53 God loves all who love
him, Symeon says, not in any generic, shadowy way, but in a concrete reality of
possessive love.54 This is why so many, out of ignorance of what a fiery thing
the love of God is,55 accuse those who do see it of talking nonsense,56 even to
51 Hymn 1. M 12; Hymn 12. M 39; Hymn 34. M 188; Hymn 44. M 232; Hymn 45. M 235; Hymn 50.
M 233–234; Hymn 58. M 292.
52 Surely one of the reasons why theologians like Stephen of Alexina decidedly tried to ruin
Symeon’s reputation. But in this “hard saying” Symeon is merely repeating the generic
patristic teaching that mankind was made By God as an being of immortal potential, and
without the union with God, that potential attains corruption instead of life. Symeon is
here also combining Paul’s doctrine of the “earthly man,” with the Johannine (Prologue)
teaching that the darkness hates the light. Cf. Hymn 34. M 190; John 1:4–5.
53 Hymn 1. M 14.
54 Hymn 53. M 267.
55 Hymn 32. M 179; Hymn 34. M 190.
56 Hymn 32. M 179–180.
168 mcguckin
the point of blaspheming and asserting that God does not reveal himself any
longer to people of this present generation in the direct way he seems to have
done to past saints.
On the contrary, even now this light, this fire, is a real thing. It is not just a
symbolic way of talking, Symeon insists:
You fill those whom you look upon with a sharing and a communion, not
only in the life to come (woe to those who speak thus!) but even now in
the body; those who are worthy of you; those who seek to purify them-
selves by a true repentance. You see them. You give to them the power to
see you: distinctly—in no way only in the imagination, or by over-fervid
thinking, or merely as a memory, as some think; but in truth, by means
of a divine reality and an awesome operation: and this for the real fulfil-
ment of the divine economy of salvation. For it is in such a way that you
accomplish the union of that which has been separated. You are God: the
salvation of all sinners.57
To say that the divine light is noetically perceived does not mean to say it is infe-
rior, less real, than saying it is a concrete material light. The issue is one of per-
ception. What human organ is appropriate to perceive the wholly immaterial,
radiant, divine presence? The patristic tradition, as well as Symeon, would have
no hesitation to restrict such a vision to the human Nous. But what Symeon
wishes to stress in his insistence that such a noetic vision is “real” is that God’s
Spirit can only activate the Nous’ ability to see the divine light, according to the
ascetic preparation, and purification of life to which an individual has commit-
ted. A beginner in the life of virtue might see the light as “far off,” before it draws
nearer.58 Symeon offers his own experience of the light-vision as a paradigm;59
for him the light was first “above him” before it came to shine “within” him.60
But as the life of virtue is embraced more seriously, as a sign of returning the
57 Hymn 58. M 279 (with some adjustments to the Maloney translation).

58 Hymn 22. M 107, “a distant star,” becoming then a solar disc; Hymn 23. M 121; a “descending
ray” becoming “a rope of light that can be grasped”; Hymn 25. M 135, a light from above
becoming a column of light within the heart; Hymn 29. M 153, light entering the cell mys-
teriously, before becoming a full moon’s radiance shining within him; Hymn 40. M 205,
light opening the heavens and then coming down into the centre of his heart; similarly
Hymn 50. M 251.
59 He sees himself as a model and guide for others through these hymns, just as he himself
had Symeon Eulabes who first mediated the experience of light to him as a young layman
Hymn 18. M 82–83.
60 Hymn 15. M 52.
outreach of God’s love for the soul, so too the light comes to radiate the disci-
ple more often and more completely. The taxonomy of how this light appears
and is attained (and Symeon speaks about this as happening in several stages)
demonstrates that it depends on the wholeheartedness of the love and repen-
tance the disciple shows. Again, his whole mission is to proclaim no doctrine
of esoteric mysticism, but a universal invitation to mercy:
You have granted me to see these things, to write about them, and to
proclaim your goodness for man to my companions so that now peoples
tribes and languages know this mystery: that you have pity on all those
who repent with fervour.61
Hymns 23, 30, 40, 50 and 58 give the clearest “ordered” account(s)62 of his dif-
ferent light experiences, for here Symeon tries to put into some kind of chrono-
logical (and to an extent in a taxonomic spiritual) order, the different kinds of
vision of light that have shaped him over his life. At other times in the Hymns
and elsewhere in the writings63 he gives a global and generic description of
the light-visions (to the effect that they do happen in reality, are meant as a
basic paradigm and proof of salvation, and that their effect is spiritually dra-
matic and sensibly perceived by the disciple) but without necessarily placing
them in the series order in which they had occurred for him.64 But it is clear
enough from these five primary Hymn accounts that Symeon wishes to make
clear that these visions unfold in scope from the initial gift, according to the zeal
of the response to God’s outreach to the sinner. The vision cannot be attained
by human effort; for the light is nothing other than the presence of God65 and
it is beyond grasping and exceeds all human knowledge,66 wholly simply in
itself,67 taking the recipient even out of the body in an ecstatic state.68 But while
the beginner sees the light “far off,” as disciples respond by purifying their lives
through asceticism, the light enters more intimately into the soul, becoming
gently immanent.
61 Hymn 13. M 46.

62 Varying among themselves.
63 Such as: Hymn 17. M 67–68; Hymn 23. M 119–122; Hymn 24. M 131; Hymn 25. M 135–136;
Hymn 29. M 153; Hymn 51. M 258–259.
64 Though Hymn 25 does appear to give a detailed account of an early vision Symeon expe-
rienced while reading in a monastic cell.
65 Hymn 45. M 233. “Your light is You my God.”
66 Hymn 50. M 250; Hymn 52. M 263.
67 Hymn 33. M 183.
68 Hymn 13. M 46; Hymn 25. M 135; Hymn 49. M 247.
170 mcguckin
The asceticism does not cause the experience: it is simply the appropriate
and serious response to God’s loving outreach. The gift of the light, as if it were
a flame, is meant to cause the wick of the soul’s lamp to catch fire, so that it too
can flame into the love of God and enter more deeply into union.69 Those who
walk in the commandments, Symeon says, will see the light of God’s face.70 For
it is through repentance that that the obedient disciples will become the Sons
of God.71 Symeon is certain that it is because he has loved Christ and repented
with passion that the Lord has given him this light in order to purify his soul
and lead it on further into union.72 The light is not a reward for prior stages
of repentance and purification (as in some aspects of the western medieval
mystical tradition): in Symeon it is intrinsically part of the very fabric of repen-
tance, which is seen as an enduring path to growing intimacy with the Lord who
indwells those who love him,73 and purifies them by virtue of this divine light.74
In Hymn 8 the light appears like a sun before descending gently into Sym-
eon’s heart.75 In Hymn 50, Symeon describes it as being seen as if it were a lamp
inside the innermost being: “a spherical light, gentle and divine, with form,
with shape, yet in a formless form.”76 In Hymn 40 it descends from on high
to enter into his monastic cell, and then moves to be rooted deep “within the
mind at the center of my heart.”77 Many varied images can describe the light
across Symeon’s writings;78 and he explains that the Lord certainly appears in
many varied forms79 which are mercifully adapted to the state, condition and
capacity of each individual: as long as they seek after God in love. Others have
closed themselves off. Symeon hears Christ express the key to it all: “I will live
only with those I love: only with those who love me.”80 Those who have not
70 Hymn 9. M 33.
71 Hymn 8. M 30.
72 Hymn 22. M 109, 111.
74 Hymn 19. M 85; Hymn 30. M 163.
75 Hymn 8. M 31.
76 Hymn 50. M 251. The “formless form” is a deliberate evocation of the concept of hyper-
essential being which Dionysius Areopagite applies to God’s incomprehensible essence.
77 Hymn 40. M 205.
78 A glowing sphere: 1st Eucharistic Discourse 1.180, Hymn 50. M 251; a Sun above clouds: Cat-
echetical Oration 16.108–110, 1st Eucharistic Discourse 1.179–180; a shining pearl or a star:
Catechetical Oration 16.108–122,127–136; a dazzling ray or beam of light: 2nd Eucharistic
Discourse 132–137, 150–155, Catechetical Oration 16.127–136; a radiant glow that contains
the face of Christ: 2nd Eucharistic Discourse 175–177.
79 The epinoiai of the Origenian tradition.
80 Hymn 22. M 122.
repented cannot see or understand any of this language of light and fire. Their
souls have not been conditioned by preparatory purification, and so have not
received the light which enables them to see light: for the light alone allows the
soul’s senses to operate noetically:
I was blind, believe me, I saw nothing, which is why this wonder disturbs
me so much more, when Christ opens in some way the eye of my mind;
when, so to say, he gives sight and is the one I see. For it is he himself who
appears to anyone who contemplates him who is the “light of light,”81 and
for those who contemplate him it is in the light82 that they see him.
The vision of the light is the sense of perfect union with the Saviour. When
the light receded from his consciousness on several earlier occasions, Symeon
articulates the sharp grief of separation; and this grief, though painful, he says,
is useful in spurring on the soul to try to attain a more Christ-united life there-
after.83 So, for Symeon, divine illumination is especially about repentance and
the ascetic zeal for fulfilling the commandments. God who sees our efforts and
responds to our love, sends his light increasingly into our souls in order to purify
them and deepen the capacity each one has for that illuminated union with
God, which Symeon ultimately calls the pitch of Theosis: deification by grace.84
God’s merciful light shining on the disciple consumes the soul in its fire85
and transforms the person into becoming all light, merged in unity with God.86
This claim had alarmed some of Symeon’s opponents for seeming to imply
that God could be held or possessed (that is circumscribed) by a creaturely
awareness; when God, as Orthodoxy insists, is wholly transcendent and incom-
prehensible. It will be an argument that raises itself again in the Hesychastic
Controversy of the Fourteenth Century. Symeon anticipates in many ways Gre-
gory Palamas when he dismisses the paradox as being a significant one. God is
wholly incomprehensible in himself, he argues, but he also reaches out to his
creatures as their Saviour in a wholly intimate and accessible manner. The light,
being God’s presence, is ineffable, simple and formless,87 yet that presence
81 The Nicene Creed’s title of the Son proceeding from the Father as “Light from Light, true
God from true God.”
82 Ps 36:9.
83 Hymn 17. M 67.
84 Hymn 15. M 53; Hymn 26. M 139–140; Hymn 29. M 158; Hymn 50. M 254.
85 Hymn 44. M 231.
172 mcguckin
can also be felt directly. In giving the soul his light, God gives his whole per-
son, limited of course to the capacity of the created soul, which is also therein
given that capacity to see. Symeon explains the paradox of giving the divine
totality to a limited consciousness by the image of the man who tastes a drop
of water—and in that single drop has experienced all the vast oceans of the
world.88 He also notes (as Gregory the Theologian and Dionysius had already
well established) that while transcendent illimitability is a true characteristic
of the divine light; there are many other titles or names, that can equally char-
acterise it in an “Economic” way.89 In short, the gift of divine light changes the
perceptions of the soul, in order for it to become dispassionate90 and see noet-
ically;91 for the union with the Creator transfigures, divinizes,92 by God’s loving
outreach and initiative.
In conclusion, then, we can see that Symeon’s doctrine of the divine light
is a complex and rich web, that embraces the patristic doctrine of the salvific
economy of the Incarnation, and applies it through certain discrete emphases,
to stress the aspect of the Logos seeking out lost souls, and inspiring them so
to yearn for loving union with their master that the yearning becomes a fire
and a light and stimulates them to live out the virtues gladly, and count all
ascetical effort as nothing but gain. This theme of rousing the soul’s deep Eros
for the Logos is an ancient Christian tradition, initially set out by Origen in
his Commentary on Canticles, and developed by the Cappadocian Fathers, and
then by Dionysius and Maximus. Symeon adds his own special emphases to it
which he has learned, so it seems, from a direct experiential basis. Knowing that
his spiritual Elder had first initiated him into this experience of divine light,
and how it then drove his entire Christian life of repentant fervour after that
point, Symeon offers his autobiographical spiritual experiences as a paradigm
to teach his own disciples.
After his conflict with the imperial court, in the person of bishop Stephen
of Alexina, who objected to the highly personalistic way Symeon shaped the
spiritual life, Symeon insisted very strongly that the vision of the divine light
was no literary trope, or mental imagination, or symbolic way of speaking; but
rather was a true and real experience that was not merely his own, but had to
be that of all Christians if they were to be sincere believers. His writings about
the experience of divine light, however, do in fact speak of his autobiograph-
88 Hymn 23. M 119–120.

89 Hymn 18. M 79; Hymn 28. M 150; Hymn 42. M 218.
90 Hymn 15. M 53; Hymn 46. M 237.
91 Hymn 27. M 143; Hymn 47. M 240.
92 Hymn 26. M 139–140.
ical experiences (concrete and stunning for his own development), and also
about how enlightenment (generically understood) should be the foundational
experience for all true Christians. In the latter instance he has started to speak
generically about divine illumination in a way somewhat distinct from his own
dynamic experiences of the divine light in his soul. He does imply that the fer-
vent believer will be rewarded with the growing experience of this divine light
experientially and personally witnessed (aisthetos) but, nevertheless, he does,
in these instances, treat the divine light in the more abstract form of the man-
ner in which God constantly “enlightens” and “illuminates” the soul through a
variety of economic graces (not necessarily by the sensate experience of per-
ceived light). And this latter way of speaking, in the Hymns, is something of the
“trope” he had earlier rejected in the context of the argument with his oppo-
nents. One may explain this lack of resolution in different ways.
In the first instance, Symeon is not a particularly consistent and systematic
thinker or writer. He is a rhapsodic poet, and he customarily paints in bright
colours. Also, his stark distinction between tropic and realist language about
the divine light, is largely meant for the ears of sceptics. At other times he
relaxes it; but even when he speaks of the way in which every true believer
experiences divine illumination all the time, he does not intend to suggest this
is “not real” or is merely “a figure of speech.” On the contrary, he insists that this
enlightening energy of God does shine sensibly and perceptively all the time,
but for most believers, the fire of the heart’s loving repentance is not sufficient
to have prepared the capacity for seeing and feeling it noetically. Without a soul
purified by ascesis and virtue, the power of the Nous is so weak it cannot truly
perceive what is happening at the core of its own being. This is a symptom of
the ontological fracturing of Mankind caused by the fall into sin and mortality.
Symeon’s clarion call to turn towards the quest for the ever clearer experiencing
of the divine light is, at root, a call to his generation to repentance, and through
that gateway to seek the true self. For Symeon this is an understanding that
Man can only emerge as himself when he wondrously realizes his divine con-
dition. Despite his present weakness he is a transcendent being because of the
Logos’ gift of love: and if he cannot see that, he is indeed stumbling and blind,
as well as weak. Symeon’s passionate message is no form of élitist mysticism: it
is fundamental to the evangelical proclamation, and as urgent today as it was
in his own time.
part 3
Jewish Temple and Christian Liturgy
∵
chapter 10
Leviathan’s Knot: The High Priest’s Sash as a

Cosmological Symbol
Andrei A. Orlov
Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities 3.154–156 unveils the following description of

the high priest’s sash:
This robe is a tunic descending to the ankles, enveloping the body and
with long sleeves tightly laced round the arms; they gird it at the breast,
winding to a little above the armpits the sash, which is of a breadth of
about four fingers and has an open texture giving it the appearance of
a serpent’s skin. Therein are interwoven flowers of divers hues, of crim-
son and purple, blue and fine linen, but the warp is purely of fine linen.
Wound a first time at the breast (καὶ λαβοῦσα τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς ἑλίξεως κατὰ
στέρνον), after passing round it once again, it is tied and then hangs at
length, sweeping to the ankles, that is so long as the priest has no task
in hand, for so its beauty is displayed to the beholders’ advantage; but
when it behoves him to attend to the sacrifices and perform his ministry,
in order that the movements of the sash may not impede his actions, he
throws it back over his left shoulder. Moses gave it the name of abaneth,
but we have learnt from the Babylonians to call it hemian, for so is it des-
ignated among them.1
Several scholars have drawn attention to unusual features associated with the
sacerdotal girdle. Crispin Fletcher-Louis, for example, notices several peculiar
details in this description, including the comparison of the sash with the skin
of the serpent (ὄφις) and the language of “twisting” (ἕλιξ), further supporting
serpentine symbolism.2 Analyzing these features, he concludes that “the lan-
1 Henry Thackeray, Josephus, LCL. 10 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press/London:

Heinemann, 1967), 4.388–389.
2 Crispin Fletcher-Louis, “The High Priest as Divine Mediator in the Hebrew Bible: Dan 7:13 as a
Test Case,” SBLSP 36 (1997): 161–193 at 191. See also Crispin Fletcher-Louis, “Priests and Priest-
hood,” in Joel B. Green, Jeannine K. Brown, and Nicholas Perrin, eds., Dictionary of Jesus and
the Gospels, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2013), 698.

178 orlov
guage is reminiscent of that used of the ‘twisting’ serpent in Isa 27:1–23 and the
parallel passage in the Baal cycle (CTA 5.I.1–3) where, as we have seen, there is a
reference to an ephod.”4 He also draws attention to another description of the
sash in Ant. 3.185, in which Josephus again offers a novel interpretation of the
priestly sash, though this time comparing it to the ocean which encompasses
the earth:
The essen, again, he set in the midst of this garment, after the manner of
the earth, which occupies the midmost place; and by the girdle where-
with he encompassed it he signified the ocean (ὠκεανὸν), which holds the
whole in its embrace.5
In light of the sash’s associations with the serpent’s skin and with the watery
substance, which in some mythological traditions was understood to be the
traditional domain of the sea monster, Fletcher-Louis suggests that the sacer-
dotal sash might represent the defeated Leviathan. He also posits that Josephus
in his passage likens the high priest to a divine warrior who defeats the sea
monster, the sash here symbolizing victory over chaotic forces. Fletcher-Louis
finishes his examination by noting the possibility that “the high priest wears a
vanquished Leviathan: the sash hanging at his side evokes the image of a limp
and defeated serpent in the hand of its conqueror.”6 Several other scholars have
found Fletcher-Louis’ proposal plausible, agreeing that “the serpentine cloth
from which the sash is made and its identification as the ocean do suggest that
it is to be identified with the Leviathan.”7 Like Fletcher-Louis’ research, these
studies also attempt to interpret Josephus’ description of the sash through the
lenses of the divine warrior motif. Margaret Barker extends the use of this inter-
3 Isa 27:1 reads: “On that day the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish
Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that
is in the sea.”
4 Fletcher-Louis, “The High Priest as Divine Mediator,” 191.
5 Thackeray, Josephus, 4.405.
6 Fletcher-Louis, “The High Priest as Divine Mediator,” 191. Elsewhere he reiterates the same the-
sis by arguing that “the high priest’s ephod is probably the same kind of garment which Baʿal
wears when he slays Leviathan (CTA 5.I.1–5). A passage in Josephus (Ant. 3.154–156) suggests
his sash was worn to evoke the image of a slain Leviathan hanging limp at its conqueror’s side.”
Crispin Fletcher-Louis, “Alexander the Great’s Worship of the High Priest,” in Loren T. Stuck-
enbruck and Wendy E. Sproston North, eds., Early Jewish and Christian Monotheism (London:
T&T Clark, 2004), 71–102 at 87.
7 Andrew Angel, Chaos and the Son of Man: The Hebrew Chaoskampf Tradition in the Period 515
bce to 200 CE, LSTS 60 (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 183.
the high priest’s sash as a cosmological symbol 179
pretive framework to her analysis of Christian developments, such as the motif

of the defeated waters found in the Book of Revelation. She notes that
the defeated waters occur, however, in two other places in Revelation: in

the vision of the new heaven and the new earth there is “no more sea”
(21.1) and in the vision of the risen Lord, when he is described as the heav-
enly high priest wearing a long robe with a golden girdle around his breast
(1.13). Josephus tells us the significance of the high priest’s girdle: “This
vestment reaches down to the feet and sits close to the body; … it is girded
to the breast a little above the elbows by a girdle often going round, four
fingers broad, but so loosely woven that you would think it the skin of a
serpent … And the girdle which encompassed the high priest round sig-
nified the ocean …” (Ant. 3.154, 185). The risen Lord wears the ocean like
the skin of a dead snake, the encircler with seven heads!8
While the images of the divine warrior and the defeated sea monster are impor-
tant for interpreting Josephus’ tradition regarding the high priest’s sash, other
possibilities, especially ones arising from the sacerdotal dimension of the nar-
rative, have been neglected. For example, there is good reason to think that
the enigmatic serpentine sash might be closely related to the traditions of the
cosmological temple, which loom large in the third book of Josephus’ Jewish
Antiquities. The sash’s association with the ocean suggests such a cosmologi-
cal significance; in fact, this item may be envisioned as a part of the Temple
of Creation. In the remainder of this essay, we will examine this cosmological
imagery in more detail.
1 The High Priest as the Microcosmic Temple
In order to better understand a possible cosmological meaning of the priestly

sash, we must examine its precise function in the broader context of Josephus’
description of the high priest’s accoutrement found in the third book of his
Jewish Antiquities. This task is not easy, since this portion of Jewish Antiquities
contains one of the most detailed descriptions of the high priestly vestments
in early Jewish extra-biblical sources. In this lengthy and elaborate account,
Josephus goes beyond the traditional biblical descriptions of the sacerdotal gar-
8 Margaret Barker, The Revelation of Jesus Christ: Which God Gave to Him to Show to His Servants
What Must Soon Take Place (Revelation 1.1) (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 220.
180 orlov
ments by unveiling the cosmological significance of the priestly accessories. It

is important for our study to note that in Josephus’ narrative, the garments of
the high priest are linked both to the imagery of the earthly Temple, and to
its cosmological counterpart in the form of the so-called “Temple of Creation.”
Ant. 3.178–187 provides the following interpretation of the sacred vestments:
Such is the apparel of the high priest. But one may well be astonished at
the hatred which men have for us and which they have so persistently
maintained, from an idea that we slight the divinity whom they them-
selves profess to venerate. For if one reflects on the construction of the
tabernacle and looks at the vestments of the priest and the vessels which
we use for the sacred ministry, he will discover that our lawgiver was a
man of God and that these blasphemous charges brought against us by
the rest of men are idle. In fact, every one of these objects is intended
to recall and represent the universe, as he will find if he will but con-
sent to examine them without prejudice and with understanding …. The
high priest’s tunic … signifies the earth, being of linen, and its blue the
arch of heaven, while it recalls the lightnings by its pomegranates, the
thunder by the sound of its bells. His upper garment, too, denotes univer-
sal nature, which it pleased God to make of four elements; being further
interwoven with gold in token, I imagine, of the all-pervading sunlight.
The essen, again, he set in the midst of this garment, after the manner of
the earth, which occupies the midmost place; and by the girdle where-
with he encompassed it he signified the ocean, which holds the whole in
its embrace. Sun and moon are indicated by the two sardonyxes where-
with he pinned the high priest’s robe. As for the twelve stones, whether
one would prefer to read in them the months or the constellations of like
number, which the Greeks call the circle of the zodiac, he will not mis-
take the lawgiver’s intention. Furthermore, the headdress appears to me
to symbolize heaven, being blue; else it would not have borne upon it the
name of God, blazoned upon the crown—a crown, moreover, of gold by
reason of that sheen in which the Deity most delights.9
9 Thackeray, Josephus, 4.403–407. In relation to Josephus’ interpretation of the Temple imagery,

Jon Levenson argues the following: “the affinity of Josephus’ method of interpreting the Tem-
ple with Hellenistic allegory, Jewish and Gentile, and ultimately with Platonic philosophy, is
unmistakable. This granted, however, it would be an error to see this allegory as the aberration
of a Jew writing in Greek largely for the benefit of a mixed Hellenistic intelligentsia. For this
sort of allegorical reading of the Tabernacle/Temple is also abundant in Rabbinic literature,
In this passage one finds at least three concepts of the sanctuary that are
closely intertwined: first, the earthly shrine represented by the Jerusalem Tem-
ple; second, the macrocosmic Temple, whose sacred chambers corresponded
to heaven, air/earth, and sea; and third, the microcosmic Temple embodied by
the high priest and his sacerdotal garments. When compared to the biblical
narratives, a distinctive feature of this description is Josephus’ attempt to inter-
pret the symbolism of the priestly garb not only through the prism of allusions
to the earthly tabernacle or Temple, but also through their connections with
cosmological realities. In this novel cosmological framework, each part of the
priestly accouterment is linked not only to particular portions of the tripartite
structure of the early sanctuary, but also with the respective sacred chambers
of the Temple of Creation, which in Josephus’ worldview correspond to heaven,
air/earth, and sea.
These striking connections between elements of the priestly attire and parts
of the earthly and cosmological sanctuaries have not gone unnoticed by schol-
ars. Reflecting on these cultic correspondences, for instance, Gregory Beale says
“it is, in fact, discernible that there are broadly three sections of the priest’s gar-
ment that resemble the three sections of the temple.”10 He further notes that,
“given all this symbolism, one can easily understand the assertion in the Let-
ter of Aristeas that anyone who saw the fully attired high priest ‘would think
he had come out of this world into another one.’ ”11 Beale has drawn attention
to the fact that these striking sacerdotal correspondences were not unique to
Josephus, but rather hinted or openly attested in a broad range of the ancient
Jewish sources, including the LXX, Philo,12 and the Wisdom of Solomon, among
others.13 Since the idea of the Temple of Creation is important for our investi-
written in Hebrew for a Jewish readership.” Jon Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of
Evil. The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 96.
10 Gregory Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, NSBT 15 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVar-
sity Press, 2004), 39.
11 Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, 39–40.
12 Philo, Mos. II.117: “Such was the vesture of the high priest. But I must not leave untold its
meaning and that of its parts. We have in it as a whole and in its parts a typical repre-
sentation of the world and its particular parts.” Francis Henry Colson and George Herbert
Whitaker, eds., Philo, LCL. 10 vols. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1929–1964), 5.505; Spec. 1.84: “The high priest is bidden to put on a similar dress when he
enters the inner shrine to offer incense, because its fine linen is not, like wool, the prod-
uct of creatures subject to death, and also to wear another, the formation of which is very
complicated. In this it would seem to be a likeness and copy of the universe. This is clearly
shewn by the design.” Colson and Whitaker, Philo, 7.149.
13 Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, 39.
182 orlov
gation of the high priest’s sash in Josephus, a short excursus into the traditions
of the cosmological temple is necessary.
Recent scholarship has demonstrated that the idea of the cosmological tem-
ple, or the so-called Temple of Creation is attested in a variety of early Jewish
and Christian sources.14 Such a macrocosmic sacred structure reflected the tri-
partite division of the earthly temple wherein heaven was conceived as the uni-
versal holy of holies, earth as the holy place, and the underworld (represented
by the sea) as the courtyard. This concept of the cosmological temple, connect-
ing creation and cult, is quite ancient, stemming from early Mesopotamian15
and Egyptian16 traditions. In early Jewish materials, this conceptual trend is
often associated with a cluster of protological motifs in which the Garden of
Eden functions as the celestial Holy of Holies17 where the first human minis-
14 On this see Margaret Barker, The Gate of Heaven: the History and Symbolism of the Tem-
ple in Jerusalem (London: SPCK, 1991), 104–132; Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mis-
sion, 29–79; Aldina A. de Silva, “A Comparison Between the Three-Levelled World of the
Old Testament Temple Building Narratives and the Three-Levelled World of the House
Building Motif in the Ugaritic Texts KTU 1.3 and 1.4,” in George J. Brooke, Adrian H.W. Cur-
tis, and John F. Healy, eds., Ugarit and the Bible (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1994), 11–23;
Crispin Fletcher-Louis, Luke-Acts: Angels, Christology and Soteriology, WUNT 2.94 (Tüb-
ingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 156–162; Richard Hayward, The Jewish Temple: A Non-Biblical
Sourcebook (London and New York: Routledge, 1996); Victor Hurowitz, I Have Built You
an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and North-West
Semitic Writings (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992), 335–337; Craig Koester, The Dwelling of God:
the Tabernacle in the Old Testament, Intertestamental Jewish Literature, and the New Testa-
ment, CBQMS 22 (Washington: Catholic Biblical Association, 1989), 59–63; Jon Levenson,
“The Temple and the World,” JR 65 (1984): 283–298; idem, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into
Jewish Bible (Minneapolis: Winston, 1985), 111–184; idem, Creation and the Persistence of
Evil. The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 87–
88; Raphael Patai, Man and Temple in Ancient Jewish Myth and Ritual (2nd ed.; New York:
KTAV, 1967), 54–139; John Walton, Genesis, NIVAC (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 148.
15 Bernd Janowski, “Der Tempel als Kosmos—Zur kosmologischen Bedeutung des Tem-
pels in der Umwelt Israels,” in Sibylle Meyer, ed., Egypt—Temple of the Whole World—
Ägypten—Tempel der Gesamten Welt. Studies in Honour of Jan Assmann (Leiden: Brill,
2003), 163–186 at 165–175. Jon Levenson notes that “the association of the Temple in
Jerusalem with ‘heaven and earth’ is not without Near Eastern antecedents, nor is it lim-
ited in the Hebrew Bible to texts whose subject is creation. At Nippur and elsewhere in
ancient Sumer, the temple held the name Duranki, ‘bond of heaven and earth,’ and we
hear of a shrine in Babylon called Etemenanki, ‘the house where the foundation of heaven
and earth is.’” Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, 90.
16 Janowski, “Der Tempel als Kosmos—Zur kosmologischen Bedeutung des Tempels in der
Umwelt Israels,” 175–184.
17 Cf. Jub. 8:19: “He knew that the Garden of Eden is the holy of holies and is the resi-
dence of the Lord.” James VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, 2 vols. CSCO 510–511. Scrip-
tores Aethiopici 87–88 (Louvain: Peeters, 1989), 2.53. Regarding this tradition, Jacques van
tered as the high priest.18 Scholars have noted that a conception of the cosmo-
logical temple is already implicit in some biblical materials, including Ezekiel’s
formative depiction of the eschatological sanctuary which, paradoxically, jux-
taposes cosmological and paradisal imagery.19
As we have already learned in this study of Jewish lore, the chambers of the
macrocosmic temple were respectively associated with heaven, earth, and sea.
Ruiten notes that in Jubilees, “[T]he Garden of Eden is seen as a Temple, or, more precisely
as a part of the Temple: the room which is in the rear of the Temple, where the ark of the
covenant of the Lord is placed, and which is often called ‘Holy of Holies.’” Jacques van
Ruiten, “Eden and the Temple: The Rewriting of Genesis 2:4–3:24 in the Book of Jubilees,”
in Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, ed., Paradise Interpreted: Representations of Biblical Paradise in
Judaism and Christianity, TBN 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 76.
18 Understanding Eden as the temple presupposes the protoplast’s role as a sacerdotal ser-
vant. Van Ruiten suggests that the author of Jubilees sees Adam acting as a prototypical
priest who burns incense at the gate of the Garden of Eden. Van Ruiten draws a parallel
between this description and a tradition found in Exodus: “[T]he incense is burned in front
of the Holy of Holies. The burning of incense is a privilege given to the priests, namely the
sons of Aaron.” Van Ruiten also calls attention to another important detail related to the
function of Adam as priest, namely, the covering of nakedness. He reminds us that cov-
ering one’s nakedness is a condition for offering, since the priests are explicitly bidden to
cover their nakedness. The author of Jubilees likewise lays emphasis on covering naked-
ness. Van Ruiten, “Eden and the Temple,” 77–78. On sacerdotal Edenic traditions, see also
James Davila, “The Hodayot Hymnist and the Four Who Entered Paradise,” RevQ 17/65–
68 (1996): 457–478; Florentino García Martínez, “Man and Woman: Halakhah Based upon
Eden in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in Gerard Luttikhuizen, ed., Paradise Interpreted: Represen-
tations of Biblical Paradise in Judaism and Christianity, TBN 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 95–115 at
112–113; Ed Noort, “Gan-Eden in the Context of the Mythology of the Hebrew Bible,” in Ger-
ard Luttikhuizen, ed., Paradise Interpreted: Representations of Biblical Paradise in Judaism
and Christianity, TBN 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 25; Donald Parry, “Garden of Eden: Prototype
Sanctuary,” in Donald W. Parry, ed., Temples of the Ancient World: Ritual and Symbolism
(Provo: Deseret, 1994), 126–151; Jacques van Ruiten, “Visions of the Temple in the Book of
Jubilees,” in Beato Ego et al., eds., Gemeinde ohne Tempel/Community without Temple: Zur
Substituierung und Transformation des Jerusalemer Tempels und seines Kults im Alten Tes-
tament, antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum, WUNT 118 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
1999), 215–228; Gordon Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” in
Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division A: The Period of the Bible
(Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1986), 19–25 at 21–22; Michael Wise, “4QFlori-
legium and the Temple of Adam,” RevQ 15 (1991): 103–132.
19 Beale notes that “Ezekiel 32 explicitly calls Eden the first sanctuary, which substantiates
that Eden is described as a temple because it is the first temple, albeit a ‘garden-temple.’”
Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, 80. Some scholars argue that Solomon’s temple
was an intentional replication of the Garden of Eden, especially in its arboreal likeness.
For this see Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, 72; Lawrence Stager, “Jerusalem
and the Garden of Eden,” in Festschrift for F.M. Cross. Eretz Israel 26. (Jerusalem: Israel
Exploration Society, 1999), 183–193; idem, “Jerusalem as Eden,” BAR 26 (2000): 36–34.
184 orlov
An early kabbalistic tradition that circulated in the name of Rabbi Pinhas ben
Yaʾir states that “the Tabernacle was made to correspond to the creation of the
world …. The house of the Holy of Holies was made to correspond to the highest
heaven. The outer Holy House was made to correspond to the earth. And the
courtyard was made to correspond to the sea.”20 This arcane cosmological spec-
ulation is not a late invention, but rather a tradition with ancient roots. Thus, in
Ant. 3.121–123, Josephus suggests that the tripartite division of the earthly sanc-
tuary was a reflection of the tripartite structure of the entire creation,21 with its
sacred chambers corresponding to heaven, earth, and sea:
Internally, dividing its length into three portions, at a measured distance

of ten cubits from the farther end he set up four pillars, constructed like
the rest and resting upon similar sockets, but placed slightly apart. The
area within these pillars was the sanctuary; the rest of the tabernacle was
open to the priests. Now this partitionment of the tabernacle was withal
an imitation of universal nature; for the third part of it, that within the
four pillars, which was inaccessible to the priests, was like heaven devoted
to God, while the twenty cubits’ space, even as earth and sea are accessi-
ble to men, was in like manner assigned to the priests alone.22
Likewise, Ant. 3.180–181 affirms a similar tradition:
For if one reflects on the construction of the tabernacle and looks at the
vestments of the priest and the vessels which we use for the sacred min-
istry, he will discover that our lawgiver was a man of God and that these
blasphemous charges brought against us by the rest of men are idle. In
fact, every one of these objects is intended to recall and represent the
universe, as he will find if he will but consent to examine them with-
out prejudice and with understanding. Thus, to take the tabernacle, thirty
cubits long, by dividing this into three parts and giving up two of them to
the priests, as a place approachable and open to all, Moses signifies the
earth and the sea, since these too are accessible to all; but the third portion
he reserved for God alone, because heaven also is inaccessible to men.23
20 Patai, Man and Temple in Ancient Jewish Myth and Ritual, 108–109.
21 Regarding the tripartite structure of the entire creation in the Jewish tradition, see Luis
Stadelmann, The Hebrew Conception of the World—A Philological and Literary Study
(Rome: Biblical Institute, 1970), 9.
22 Thackeray, Josephus, 4.373–375.
23 Thackeray, Josephus, 4.403.
The idea that cult and creation correspond is also found in another promi-
nent Jewish interpreter, Philo, who says that the holy temple of God represents
the whole universe in his Spec. 1.66.24 This belief that the earthly temple is a
replica of the entire creation is rooted in biblical texts: the creation of the world
in Gen 1–2 is set in conspicuous parallel with the building of the tabernacle in
Exod 39–40.25 According to Moshe Weinfeld, “Gen 1:1–2:3 and Ex 39:1–40:33 are
typologically identical. Both describe the satisfactory completion of the enter-
prise commanded by God, its inspection and approval, the blessing and the
sanctification which are connected with it. Most importantly, the expression
of these ideas in both accounts overlaps.”26 In view of these parallels, many
24 Spec. I.66 reads: “The highest, and in the truest sense the holy, temple of God is, as we
must believe, the whole universe, having for its sanctuary the most sacred part of all exis-
tence, even heaven ….” Colson and Whitaker, Philo, 7.137. Zohar II.149a conveys a similar
tradition: “Said R. Isaac: ‘We are aware that the structure of the Tabernacle corresponds to
the structure of heaven and earth.’” Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon, eds., The Zohar. 5
vols. (London and New York: Soncino, 1933), 4.22. Cf. also Zohar II.231a: “Now, the Taberna-
cle below was likewise made after the pattern of the supernal Tabernacle in all its details.
For the Tabernacle in all its works embraced all the works and achievements of the upper
world and the lower, whereby the Shekinah was made to abide in the world, both in the
higher spheres and the lower. Similarly, the Lower Paradise is made after the pattern of the
Upper Paradise, and the latter contains all the varieties of forms and images to be found in
the former. Hence the work of the Tabernacle, and that of heaven and earth, come under
one and the same mystery.” Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, 4.289; Zohar II.235b: “Now, the
lower and earthly Tabernacle was the counterpart of the upper Tabernacle, whilst the lat-
ter in its turn is the counterpart of a higher Tabernacle, the most high of all. All of them,
however, are implied within each other and form one complete whole, as it says: ‘that
the tabernacle may be one whole.’ The Tabernacle was erected by Moses, he alone being
allowed to raise it up, as only a husband may raise up his wife. With the erection of the
lower Tabernacle there was erected another Tabernacle on high. This is indicated in the
words ‘the tabernacle was reared up (hukam),’ reared up, that is, by the hand of no man,
but as out of the supernal undisclosed mystery in response to the mystical force indwelling
in Moses that it might be perfected with him.” Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, 4.303.
25 Levenson notes that “collectively, the function of these correspondences is to underscore
the depiction of the sanctuary as a world, that is, an ordered, supportive, and obedient
environment, and the depiction of the world as a sanctuary, that is, a place in which the
reign of God is visible and unchallenged, and his holiness is palpable, unthreatened, and
pervasive. Our examination of the two sets of Priestly texts, one at the beginning of Gene-
sis and the other at the end of Exodus, has developed powerful evidence that, as in many
cultures, the Temple was conceived as a microcosm, a miniature world.” Levenson, Cre-
ation and the Persistence of Evil, 86.
26 Moshe Weinfeld, “Sabbath, Temple and the Enthronement of the Lord—The Problem of
the Sitz im Leben of Genesis 1:1–2:3,” in André Caquot and Mathias Delcor, eds., Mélanges
bibliques et orientaux en l’honneur de M. Henri Cazelles, AOAT 212 (Kevelaer: Butzer &
Bercker, 1981), 501–12.503. See Samuel Balentine, The Torah’s Vision of Worship (Minneapo-
186 orlov
scholars suggest that the earthly sanctuary is envisioned as a microcosm of the

world, imitating the sacerdotal structure of the entire creation.27
2 The Sea as the Cosmological Courtyard
Especially important for this study is that the tripartite structure of the cosmo-
logical temple includes the sea, which corresponds in these traditions to the
courtyard of the Temple of Creation. Numbers Rabbah 13.19 mentions the court
encompassing the sanctuary just as the sea surrounds the world.28 Likewise,
B. Sukkah 51b tells how the white and blue marble of the temple walls were rem-
iniscent of the waves of the sea.29 The association between the sacred chamber
and the sea may also be suggested by the symbolism of the bronze tank in the
courtyard of Israel’s temple, designated in some texts as the “molten sea.”30 It
lis: Fortress Press, 1999), 67–68; Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission, 60–61; Joseph
Blenkinsopp, “The Structure of P,” CBQ 38 (1976): 283–286; Michael Fishbane, Text and Tex-
ture (New York: Schocken, 1979), 12; Victor Hurowitz, “The Priestly Account of Building the
Tabernacle,” JAOS 105 (1985): 21–30; Peter Kearney, “Creation and Liturgy: The P Redac-
tion of Ex 25–40,” ZAW 89.3 (1977): 375–387 at 375; Jon Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry
into the Jewish Bible (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985), 143; idem, Creation and the Persis-
tence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988),
85–86; Christophe Nihan, From Priestly Torah to Pentateuch: A Study in the Composition of
the Book of Leviticus, FAT 25 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 54–58; Walton, Genesis, 149;
Peter Weimar, “Sinai und Schöpfung: Komposition und Theologie der priesterschriftlichen
Sinaigeschichte,” RB 95 (1988): 337–385; Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of
Eden Story,” 19–25.
27 Jon Levenson suggests that “World building and Temple building seem to be homologous
activities. In fact, some of the same language can be found in the description of ‘the estab-
lishment of the sanctuary in the land and the distribution of the land among the tribes’
in Joshua 18–19.” Jon Levenson, “The Jerusalem Temple in Devotional and Visionary Expe-
rience,” in Arthur Green, ed., Jewish Spirituality. Vol. I: From the Bible through the Middle
Ages (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 32–61 at 52.
28 “… His offering was one silver dish, etc. The dish was in allusion to the court which encom-
passed the Tabernacle as the sea encompasses the world.” Freedman and Simon, Midrash
Rabbah, 6.546. Concerning a similar tradition in Midrash Tadshe, see George MacRae,
Some Elements of Jewish Apocalyptic and Mystical Tradition and Their Relation to Gnostic
Literature. 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss.; University of Cambridge, 1966), 55.
29 “… The reference is to the building of Herod. Of what did he build it?—Rabbah replied,
Of yellow and white marble. Some there are who say, with yellow, blue and white marble.
The building rose in tiers in order to provide a hold for the plaster. He intended at first to
overlay it with gold, but the Rabbis told him, Leave it alone for it is more beautiful as it
is, since it has the appearance of the waves of the sea.” Isidor Epstein, ed., The Babylonian
Talmud (London: Soncino, 1935–1952), Sukkah, 51b.
30 1Kgs 7:23–25 reads: “Then he made the molten sea; it was round, ten cubits from brim to
has been thought that “the great size of the tank … in conjunction with the fact
that no practical application is offered for the ‘sea’ during the time of Solomon,
supports the supposition that the tank served a symbolic purpose.31 Either the
‘cosmic waters,’ or the ‘waters of life,’ which emanated from below the garden
of Eden, or the ‘great deep’ of chaos is most often cited as the underlying sym-
bolism of the molten sea.”32
The depiction of the eschatological temple in the Book of Ezekiel also con-
tains similar imagery insofar as it connects the sacred courtyard to living water.
Viktor Hurowitz highlights the significance of this: “Ezekiel’s temple of the
future has a river flowing from under the threshold (Ezek 47:1) … The river envi-
sioned by Ezekiel seems to replace the basins in Solomon’s temple—basins that
may have symbolized the rivers of a divine garden.”33 Ezek 47:1–8 offers the fol-
lowing description of the sacred waters:
Then he brought me back to the entrance of the temple; there, water was
flowing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the
temple faced east); and the water was flowing down from below the south
end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought
brim, and five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference. Under
its brim were gourds, for thirty cubits, compassing the sea round about; the gourds were
in two rows, cast with it when it was cast. It stood upon twelve oxen, three facing north,
three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east; the sea was set upon them, and
all their hinder parts were inward.” (NRSV). See also 2 Kgs 16:17; 2 Kgs 25:13; 1 Chr 18:8; 2 Chr
4:2; Jer 52:17.
31 Elizabeth Bloch-Smith observes that “the exaggerated size of the structures of the Solo-
monic Temple courtyard would suggest that they were not intended for human use, but
belonged to the realm of the divine.” Elizabeth Bloch-Smith “ ‘Who is the King of Glory?’
Solomon’s Temple and Its Symbolism,” in Michael David Coogan et al., eds., Scripture and
Other Artifacts. Essays on the Bible and Archeology in Honor of Philip J. King (Louisville:
Westminster, 1994), 19–31 at 21.
32 Bloch-Smith “‘Who is the King of Glory?’ Solomon’s Temple and Its Symbolism,” 20. See
also Carol Meyers, “Sea, Molten,” in David Noel Freedman, ed., Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6
vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 5.1061–1062.
33 Victor Hurowitz, “Inside Solomon’s Temple,” Bible Review 10.2 (1994): 24–36. Jon Leven-
son also draws attention to the creational symbolism of the molten sea by arguing that
“the metal ‘Sea’ ( yam) in its courtyard (1Kgs 7:23–26) suggests the Mesopotamian apsu,
employed both as the name of the subterranean fresh-water ocean … and as the name of
a basin of holy water erected in the Temple. As the god of the subterranean freshwater
ocean, apsu played an important role in some Mesopotamian cosmogonies, just as the
Sea ( yam) did in some Israelite creation stories (e.g., Ps 74:12–17; Isa 51:9–11). This suggests
that the metal Sea in the Temple courtyard served as a continual testimony to the act of
creation.” Levenson, “The Jerusalem Temple in Devotional and Visionary Experience,” 51.
188 orlov
me out by way of the north gate, and led me around on the outside to
the outer gate that faces toward the east; and the water was coming out
on the south side. Going on eastward with a cord in his hand, the man
measured one thousand cubits, and then led me through the water; and
it was ankle-deep. Again he measured one thousand, and led me through
the water; and it was knee-deep. Again he measured one thousand, and
led me through the water; and it was up to the waist. Again he measured
one thousand, and it was a river that I could not cross, for the water had
risen; it was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be crossed. He
said to me, “Mortal, have you seen this?” Then he led me back along the
bank of the river. As I came back, I saw on the bank of the river a great
many trees on the one side and on the other. He said to me, “This water
flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah; and when
it enters the sea, the sea of stagnant waters, the water will become fresh.”
NRSV
The flowing rivers of this passage echo another account of the cosmologi-
cal temple found in the Apocalypse of Abraham in which the sea is depicted
alongside rivers and their circles.34 Like the great prophetic account, the Apoc-
alypse is familiar with the paradisal provenance of the sacred waters, connect-
ing the Edenic tree to “the spring, the river flowing from it.” In both passages,
the waters of Paradise are portrayed as “flowing.”35 The origin of the paradisal
imagery of the circulating waters appears already in Gen 2:10,36 where a river
flows from Eden to water the garden.37 In Ezekiel, however, the image of flow-
ing Edenic waters receives a further cultic meaning. Yet, such an emphasis
is not unique to Ezekiel. Gregory Beale points out38 that similar sacerdotal
imagery involving “rivers” can be found in the description of Israel’s Temple
34 On the Temple of Creation in the Apocalypse of Abraham see Andrei A. Orlov, “The Cos-
mological Temple in the Apocalypse of Abraham,” in idem, Divine Scapegoats: Demonic
Mimesis in Early Jewish Mysticism (Albany: SUNY, 2016), 37–54.
35 Apoc. Ab. 21:5: “I saw there the rivers and their overflows, and their circles;” Ezek 47:1: “water
was flowing from below the threshold of the temple.”
36 Regarding this biblical passage, Wenham observes that “the brief account of the geogra-
phy of the garden in 2:10–14 also makes many links with later sanctuary design. ‘A river
flows out of Eden to water the garden.’ … Ps 46:5 speaks of ‘a river whose streams make
glad the city of God’ and Ezekiel 47 describes a great river flowing out of the new Jerusalem
temple to sweeten the Dead Sea.” Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden
Story,” 22.
37 “A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four
branches.” (NRSV). Regarding the rivers of paradise, see also 2 En. 8, 1QH 14 and 16.
in Psalm 36:8–9.39 Scholars have additionally discerned40 a similar sacerdotal

motif of sacred waters associated with the temple settings in various Jewish
extra-biblical accounts, including the Let. Aris. 89–9141 and Jos. Asen. 2.42 Chris-
tian sources also display acquaintance with the sacerdotal tradition of flowing
waters. Rev 22:1–2, for example, portrays a river of the water of life flowing from
the throne of God.43
All these testimonies demonstrate that in early biblical and extra-biblical
Jewish accounts, rivers, seas, and oceans have often received a cosmological
significance being envisioned as a watery courtyard of the Temple of Creation
which encompasses other, more sacred chambers of the cosmological sanctu-
ary. It is in light of these traditions that the passage from Ant. 3.185, in which
the high priest’s girdle encompassed the priest as “the ocean, which holds
the whole in its embrace,”44 should be understood. Earlier we had noted how
various parts of the high priest’s accoutrement symbolically corresponded to
various chambers in both the earthly and cosmological temples. The middle
part of his multilayered attire, composed of several garments and undergar-
ments, represented the Holy Place; this, in turn symbolized in cosmological lan-
39 “They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of
your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.” (NRSV).
41 “There is an uninterrupted supply not only of water, just as if there were a plentiful spring
rising naturally from within, but also of indescribably wonderful underground reservoirs,
which within a radius of five stades from the foundation of the Temple revealed innu-
merable channels for each of them, the streams joining together on each side. All these
were covered with lead down to the foundation of the wall; on top of them a thick layer
of pitch, all done very effectively. There were many mouths at the base, which were com-
pletely invisible except for those responsible for the ministry, so that the large amounts of
blood which collected from the sacrifices were all cleansed by the downward pressure and
momentum. Being personally convinced, I will describe the building plan of the reservoirs
just as I understood it. They conducted me more than four stades outside the city, and told
me to bend down at a certain spot and listen to the noise at the meeting of the waters. The
result was that the size of the conduits became clear to me, as has been demonstrated.”
Robert Shutt, “Letter of Aristeas,” in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseude-
pigrapha, 2 vols (New York: Doubleday, 1983–1985), 2.7–34 at 18–19.
42 An image of overflowing water surrounding the Temple courtyard is found also in Jos.
Asen. 2:17–20: “And there was in the court, on the right hand, a spring of abundant liv-
ing water ….” Scholars have noted that “detailed description of [Aseneth’s] garden clearly
echoes Ezekiel’s account of what he saw in his celebrated temple-vision (Ezek. 40–48).”
Gideon Bohak, Joseph and Aseneth and the Jewish Temple in Heliopolis (Atlanta: Scholars,
1996), 68.
43 “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from
the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city.” (NRSV).
44 Thackeray, Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 4.405.
190 orlov
guage of the Temple of Creation as the “earth.” Here we should recall Josephus’
description of the priestly vestments:
The high priest’s tunic … signifies the earth, being of linen, and its blue
the arch of heaven, while it recalls the lightnings by its pomegranates, the
thunder by the sound of its bells …. The essen, again, he set in the midst
of this garment, after the manner of the earth, which occupies the mid-
most place; and by the girdle wherewith he encompassed it he signified
the ocean, which holds the whole in its embrace.45
Akin to the earthly and cosmological sanctuaries, where the watery court-
yards (represented respectively by the molten sea or the actual sea) surrounded
the Holy Place (represented in the Temple of Creation by earth), in Josephus’
description, the belt-ocean encompasses the part of the high priest’s attire des-
ignated as the “earth.” How, though, does the Leviathan imagery fit into this set
of sacerdotal traditions?
3 Leviathan as the Circuitus Mundi
As we noted at the beginning of this study, scholars are aware of the peculiar
parallelism in which Josephus associated the priestly sash first with serpentine
imagery and then with the ocean. This juxtaposition led scholars to believe that
the serpent is in fact the sea monster—the Leviathan.46 Both entities are said
to encompass the part of the high priest’s accoutrement which, in Josephus’
description, was associated with the earth. Our study already demonstrated
that the ocean, symbolized by the sash, encompasses here the microcosmic
temple embodied by the high priest’s figure. But could the Leviathan imagery
also be part of this sacerdotal symbolic framework? In this respect it is impor-
tant that in Jewish lore not only the sea or ocean, but also its enigmatic inhab-
itant, Leviathan himself, was envisioned as the sacred courtyard that encom-
passes the Temple of Creation. In these traditions, the Leviathan is depicted as
the one who encompasses the earth, acting as “Circuitus Mundi.”47
William Whitney’s exhaustive research on the Leviathan legends demon-
strates that in later Jewish materials, this idea is most clearly represented by
45 Ibid.
46 Fletcher-Louis, “The High Priest as Divine Mediator,” 698.
47 William Whitney, Two Strange Beasts: Leviathan and Behemoth in Second Temple and Early
Rabbinic Judaism, HSM 63 (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 118.
Rashbam in his commentary on b. Bava Batra 74b. In his interpretation of the

famous talmudic passage dealing with the monsters, Rashbam reveals knowl-
edge of a tradition about a female Leviathan who surrounds the earth.48 Whit-
ney draws attention to another specimen of this motif, found in Midrash ʿAseret
Had-dibberot (ca. tenth century CE), which transmits the following portrayal of
the Leviathan:
The Holy One (Blessed be He) wished to create the world. Immediately
its length was a journey of five hundred years and its breadth a journey
of five hundred years. And the great sea surrounded the whole world like
an arch of a great pillar. And the whole world was encircled by the fins of
Leviathan, who dwells in the lower waters. In them he was like a little fish
in the sea.49
The presence of this idea in relatively late Jewish materials does not necessar-
ily mean that the tradition of the Leviathan as the Circuitus Mundi represents
merely a rabbinic invention. Whitney notes that “the image of a serpent which
encircles the cosmos, the ouroboros (tail-devourer), so named because it is usu-
ally represented with its tail in its mouth, is an ancient iconographic motif in
the Mediterranean world occurring frequently in magical amulets and certain
texts of the Greco-Roman period.”50
Alexander Kulik’s research on the Leviathan tradition in 3 Baruch demon-
strates that the idea of the primordial reptile as the Circuitus Mundi has ancient
roots.51 A passage from Philo of Byblos’ work On Snakes, preserved in Eusebius’s
Pr. Ev. 1.10.45–53, contains such a concept:
Moreover the Egyptians, describing the world from the same idea, engrave
the circumference of a circle of the color of the sky and of fire, and a hawk-
shaped serpent stretched across the middle of it, and the whole shape like
our Theta, representing the circle as the world, and signifying by the ser-
pent which connects it in the middle the good daemon.52
48 Whitney, Two Strange Beasts, 118.

49 Whitney, Two Strange Beasts, 117; BHM I:63.
50 Whitney, Two Strange Beasts, 119. Whitney points out that an early example of the ouro-
boros motif appears in a silver Phoenician bowl found in an Etruscan warrior burial of ca.
ninth-eighth century BCE at Praeneste in Italy. Whitney, Two Strange Beasts, 119.
51 Alexander Kulik, “The Mysteries of Behemoth and Leviathan and the Celestial Bestiary of
3Baruch,” Le Muséon 122 (2009): 291–329 at 299.
52 Edwin Hamilton Gifford, ed., Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel),
5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1903; repr.: 2 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 1.43.
192 orlov
Pistis Sophia 3.126 also attests to this motif of the cosmic serpent that encom-
pass the entire world: “The outer darkness is a great dragon whose tail is in its
mouth, and it is outside the whole world and it surrounds the whole world.”53
Kulik identifies yet another reference to a cosmic reptile who encompasses
the world and is associated with the ocean, found in the Acts of Thomas
32:54
The snake says to him: I am a reptile, the son of reptile, and harmer, the
son of harmer: I am the son of him, to whom power was given over (all)
creatures, and he troubled them. I am the son of him, who makes him-
self like to God to those who obey him, that they may do his will. I am
the son of him, who is ruler over everything that is created under heaven.
I am the son of him, who is outside of the ocean, and whose mouth is
closed.55
A crucial early testimony to the Leviathan as the Circuitus Mundi is found in

Origen’s work, Contra Celsum VI.25:
It contained a drawing of ten circles, which were separated from one

another and held together by a single circle, which was said to be the soul of
the universe and was called Leviathan. The Jewish scriptures, with a hidden
meaning in mind, said that this Leviathan was formed by God as a play-
thing. For in the Psalms we find: “Thou hast made all things in wisdom; the
earth is filled with thy creation. This is the sea great and wide; there go the
ships, small animals and great, this serpent which thou didst form to play
with him.” Instead of the word “serpent” the Hebrew text read “Leviathan.”
The impious diagram said that the Leviathan, which was clearly so objec-
tionable to the prophet, is the soul that has permeated the universe. We
also found that Behemoth is mentioned in it as if it were some being fixed
below the lowest circle. The inventor of this horrible diagram depicted
Leviathan upon the circumference of the circle and at its centre, putting
in the name twice.56
53 Carl Schmidt and Violet MacDermot, eds., Pistis Sophia, NHS 9 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 317.
54 Kulik, “The Mysteries of Behemoth and Leviathan,” 299.
55 Albertus Frederik Johannes Klijn, The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary,
2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 92–93.
56 Henry Chadwick, Origen, Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953),
340.
Whitney’s research underscores the complexity of the Leviathan imagery in

this presentation of the Ophite diagram. In his judgment, the “circled” serpent
(ouroboros) is portrayed as surrounding another “axial” serpent.57
Finally, the most important passage suggesting the Leviathan’s role as Cir-
cuitus Mundi can be found in the Apocalypse of Abraham, a text usually dated
to the second century C.E.58 In this text Abraham is given a vision of the lower
regions of creation where he is able to behold the domain of the Leviathan.
Apoc. Ab. 21:1–5 reads:
And he said to me, “Look now beneath your feet at the expanse and con-
template the creation which was previously covered over. On this level
there is the creation and those who inhabit it and the age that has been
prepared to follow it.” And I looked beneath the expanse at my feet and
I saw the likeness of heaven and what was therein. And I saw there the
earth and its fruits, and its moving ones, and its spiritual ones, and its host
of men and their spiritual impieties, and their justifications, and the pur-
suits of their works, and the abyss and its torment, and its lower depths,
and the perdition which is in it. And I saw there the sea and its islands,
and its animals and its fishes, and Leviathan and his domain, and his lair,
and his dens, and the world which lies upon him, and his motions and the
destruction of the world because of him. I saw there the rivers and their
overflows, and their circles (кругы ихъ).59
Two details of this description are important for our study. First is the associ-
ation of the Leviathan’s domain with the water symbolism, including the sea
57 Whitney, Two Strange Beasts, 122.

58 On the date of the Apocalypse of Abraham, see George Herbert Box and Joseph Lands-
man, The Apocalypse of Abraham. Edited, with a Translation from the Slavonic Text and
Notes, TED 1.10 (London, New York: Macmillan, 1918), xv–xix; Belkis Philonenko-Sayar and
Marc Philonenko, L’Apocalypse d’Abraham. Introduction, texte slave, traduction et notes,
Semitica 31 (Paris: Librairie Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1981), 34–35; Ryszard Rubinkiewicz and
Horace Lunt, “Apocalypse of Abraham,” in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testa-
ment Pseudepigrapha. 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1983–1985), 1.681–705 at 683; Ryszard
Rubinkiewicz, L’Apocalypse d’Abraham en vieux slave. Introduction, texte critique, traduc-
tion et commentaire, ŹM 129 (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu
Lubelskiego, 1987), 70–73; Alexander Kulik, “К датировке ‘Откровения Авраама,’ ” in
N.M. Botvinnik and Je. I. Vaneeva, eds., In Memoriam of Ja. S. Lur’e (St. Petersburg: Fenix,
1997), 189–195; idem, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: Toward the Original of the
Apocalypse of Abraham, TCS 3 (Atlanta: Scholars, 2004), 2–3.
59 Kulik, Retroverting Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, 26; Philonenko-Sayar and Philonenko, L’ Apo-
calypse d’Abraham, 82–84.
194 orlov
and the rivers. Connecting the Leviathan to the rivers will become a promi-
nent motif in later Jewish mysticism.60 The second feature is the reference
to the rivers’ circles (Slav. кругы).61 Such a reference might indicate the mon-
ster’s role as the Circuitus Mundi in view of his association with these watery
streams.
4 The High Priest as the Eschatological Adam
It is interesting that Josephus describes the high priest’s sash as being some-
what different from the belts of ordinary priests, since it had a mixture of gold
interwoven into it. In Ant. 3.159 he says:
The high priest is arrayed in like manner, omitting none of the things
already mentioned, but over and above these he puts on a tunic of blue
material. This too reaches to the feet, and is called in our tongue meeir; it
is girt about him with a sash decked with the same gay hues as adorned
the first, with gold ( χρυσοῦ) interwoven into its texture.62
This description represents a departure from the biblical patterns, where the
sash is not associated with gold.63 However, the golden sash appears in the
portrayal of Christ in Rev 1:13,64 where some argue he is being depicted as the
heavenly high priest.65
If for Josephus the sash is associated with the symbolism of the protologi-
cal monster, the golden nature of this priestly item brings to mind some Jewish
traditions about the luminosity of the Leviathan’s skin. Pesiqta de Rav Kahana,
for example, describes the Leviathan’s skin with the symbolism of shining gold
that surpasses the splendor of the sun:
60 See, for example, Zohar I.52a.

61 Philonenko-Sayar and Philonenko, L’Apocalypse d’Abraham, 84.
62 Thackeray, Josephus. Jewish Antiquities, 4.390–391.
63 Ex 39:29: “and the sash of fine twisted linen, and of blue, purple, and crimson yarns,
embroidered with needlework; as the Lord had commanded Moses.”
64 Rev 1:13: “and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with
a long robe and with a golden sash (ζώνην χρυσᾶν) across his chest.”
65 See Ross Winkle, “‘You Are What You Wear’: The Dress and Identity of Jesus as High Priest
in John’s Apocalypse,” in Henrietta L. Wiley and Christian A. Eberhart, eds., Sacrifice, Cult,
and Atonement in Early Judaism and Christianity: Constituents and Critique (Atlanta: SBL
Press, 2017), 344–345.
Lest you suppose that the skin of the Leviathan is not something extraor-
dinary, consider what R. Phinehas the Priest ben Hama and R. Jeremiah
citing R. Samuel bar R. Isaac said of it: The reflection of the Leviathan’s
fins makes the disk of the sun dim by comparison, so that it is said of
each of the fins “It telleth the sun that it shines weakly” (Job 9:7). For The
[Leviathan’s] underparts, the reflections thereof, [surpass] the sun: where it
lieth upon the mire, there is a shining of yellow gold (Job 41:22). It is said,
moreover, that the words Where it lieth upon the mire, there is a shining
of yellow gold (harus) mean [not only that the Leviathan’s underparts
shine, but] that the very place it lies upon is harus—that is, golden. Hence
Where it lieth upon the mire, there is a shining of yellow gold. Still further
it is said: Ordinarily, there is no place more filthy than the one where a
fish lies. But the place where the Leviathan lies is purer even than yellow
gold. Hence Where it lieth upon the mire, there is a shining of yellow gold
(Job 41:22).66
This depiction of the Leviathan’s skin with the imagery of “shining of yellow
gold” is important for our study, since the high priest’s sash in Josephus and
Rev 1 is also described with gold symbolism.
Furthermore, Pesiqta de Rav Kahana speaks more specifically about the
“glory” of the Leviathan:
On account of its glory, he [God] brings forth his defenders. (Job 41:7).
Because he possesses a celestial glory, the Holy One (Blessed be He) says
to the ministering angels, “Go down and wage war with it.”67
Reflecting on this striking narrative about the glory of the primordial reptile,
Irving Jacobs notes that
the imagery and language employed in the opening lines of this passage
require further evaluation, particularly the phrase “celestial glory.” This
66 William Braude and Israel Kapstein, eds., Pesikta de-Rab Kahana. R. Kahana’s Compila-
tion of Discourses for Sabbaths and Festal Days (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society
of America, 1975), 467.
67 While Irving and Whitney render this passage with the formulae of “glory,” Braude and
Kapstein prefer use the term “pride” by rendering the passage in the following way:
“The rows of his shields are his pride (Job 41:7). The Leviathan has the pride which
is proper only to Him who is on high, and so the Holy One says to the ministering
angels: Go down and wage war against him.” Braude and Kapstein, Pesikta de-Rab Kahana,
468.
196 orlov
unusual formulation occurs, apparently, only in the above context, from

which it is difficult to determine its precise significance. We may assume,
however, that our unknown aggadist is alluding to an ancient tradition—
possibly biblical in origin—that Leviathan is endowed with a supernat-
ural splendour. According to an early tannaitic source, Leviathan’s eyes
are great orbs of light illuminating the depths of the sea. Pesiqta d’Rav
Kahana, from which the quotation is taken, also records the tradition that
Leviathan’s fins alone could dim the light of the sun with their brilliance.
In this respect, the splendour of Leviathan is comparable with that of the
primordial light, which, according to rabbinic tradition, emanated from
the mantle donned by God at the time of creation. Thus Leviathan radi-
ates a heavenly splendour.68
68 Irving Jacobs, The Midrashic Process: Tradition and Interpretation in Rabbinic Judaism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 160–162. Jacobs traces this attribute of
glory to some Mesopotamian traditions, noting that the “interpretation of this obscure
phrase is supported by a much older source, which may preserve the prototype for the
awesome, luminous monster of Jewish tradition. The Babylonian creation epic contains
a description of the dreadful dragons provided for Tiamat’s army by Mother Hubur.
These monsters are garbed with a pulhu, the awesome, fiery garment of the gods, and
are crowned with a melammu, a dazzling, divine aureole, so that when they rear up—
like Leviathan—none can withstand them.” Jacobs, The Midrashic Process, 162. Cf. Enuma
Elish 1, lines 136–139; 11, lines 23–26; 111, lines 27–30, also lines 85–88 (J.B. Pritchard, ANET,
pp. 62): “Roaring dragons she has clothed with terror, Has crowned them with haloes, mak-
ing them like gods, So that he who beholds them shall perish abjectly, (And) that, with
their bodies reared up, none might turn them back.” Jacobs, The Midrashic Process, 160–
162. In a recent study, Shawn Zelig Aster defines melammu as “a quality of overwhelming
and overpowering strength, and it can be defined as ‘the covering, outer layer, or outward
appearance of a person, being, or object, or rays emanating from a person or being, that
demonstrate the irresistible or supreme power of that person, being, or object.’ A god who
possesses melammu is sovereign, a person who possesses melammu is unbeatable, and a
force which possesses melammu cannot successfully be stopped. In second-millennium
mythic texts the melammu is portrayed as a cloak or covering, which is often radiant. But
many texts ascribe melammu to objects that are not radiant, and radiance is not an intrin-
sic element of melammu in most periods. Beginning in the Sargonid period (late eight
century BCE), melammu can be used as a synonym for terms meaning ‘radiance,’ but it can
also be used in its more traditional meaning. When used with this traditional meaning (the
standard definition of which is given above), melammu does not necessarily indicate a
radiant phenomenon.” Shawn Zelig Aster, The Phenomenon of Divine and Human Radiance
in the Hebrew Bible and in Northwest Semitic and Mesopotamian Literature: A Philological
and Comparative Study (Ph.D. diss.; University of Pennsylvania, 2006), 512–513. On the ter-
minology of melammu and its application to the monsters and other antagonists, see Leo
Oppenheim, “Akkadian pul(u)h(t)u and melammu,” JAOS 63 (1943): 31–34; Elena Cassin,
La splendeur divine: Introduction à l’étude de la mentalité mésopotamienne, Civilisations
The legends about the glory of the Leviathan in rabbinic literature are not
confined solely to these excerpts from Pesiqta de Rav Kahana, but also can
be found in the talmudic passages. B. Baba Batra 74a, when describing the
Leviathan’s skin, also portrays it as a luminous entity: “The Holy One, blessed
be He, will in time to come make a tabernacle for the righteous from the skin
of Leviathan … The rest [of Leviathan] will be spread by the Holy One, blessed
be He, upon the walls of Jerusalem, and its splendour will shine from one end
of the world to the other; as it is said: And nations shall walk at thy light, and
kings at the brightness of thy rising.”69 A reference to the Leviathan’s “glory”
also appears in Qalliri’s description of this primordial reptile: “Great fish dance
about beneath him. Angels sing above him. They proclaim his splendor and his
glory.”70 Scholars often equate “Leviathan’s glory to the celestial splendor of the
pulhu, the divine garment, and the melammu, the divine aureole, in which the
dragons of Tiamat’s army are garbed in Enuma Elish.”71
One interesting detail which emerges from the aforementioned testimonies
about the Leviathan’s glory is the comparison of its radiance to the sun. Recall
that Pesiqta de Rav Kahana informs us how “the reflection of the Leviathan’s
fins makes the disk of the sun dim by comparison.” Irving Jacobs noted that
the same association is frequently present in rabbinic descriptions of Adam’s
glory.72 Indeed, from b. Baba Batra 58a we learn that “his [Adam’s] two heels …
were like two orbs of the sun.” Midrashim are also familiar with such compar-
isons. According to Leviticus Rabbah 20.2, “the apple of Adam’s heel outshone
the globe of the sun; how much more so the brightness of his face!”73 Something
similar is found in Ecclesiastes Rabbah 8:1: “the ball of Adam’s heel outshone the
sun … so was it not right that the ball of his heel should outshine the sun, and
how much more so the beauty of his face!”74
et Sociétés 8 (Paris and La Haye: Mouton, 1968); Shawn Zelig Aster, The Phenomenon of
Divine and Human Radiance, 80–82; idem, The Unbeatable Light: Melammu and Its Bibli-
cal Parallels, AOAT 384 (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2012).
69 Epstein, The Babylonian Talmud. Baba Bathra, 75a.
70 Whitney, Two Strange Beasts, 134–135.
71 Whitney, Two Strange Beasts, 137. Enuma Elish (ANET, 62–65) I. 136–139; 2.23–26; 3.27–30,
85–88.
72 Irving, The Midrashic Process, 162.
73 Harry Freedman and Maurice Simon, eds., Midrash Rabbah, 10 vols. (London: Soncino,
1961), 4.252.
74 Freedman and Simon, Midrash Rabbah, 8.213–214. See also Zohar I.142b: “Said R. Jose: ‘Can
it really be so, that Jacob’s beauty equaled that of Adam, seeing that, according to tradi-
tion, the fleshy part of Adam’s heel outshone the orb of the sun? Would you, then, say the
same of Jacob?’” Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, 2.57.
198 orlov
Such a juxtaposition of the motifs of the luminosity of the Leviathan and

the protoplast is relevant for our study of the high priest’s sash. In Jewish sac-
erdotal traditions, the high priest was often envisioned as the eschatological
Adam who restores the cultic role of the protoplast, he who once was the high
priest of the Garden of Eden. Interestingly, some Jewish traditions suggest the
garments of the high priest were literally the protoplast’s garments transmitted
through successive generations until they reached Aaron.75
The link between the high priestly attire and Adam’s clothes is significant
for our study of the cultic servant wearing the Leviathan’s luminous skin, since
it echoes some Jewish traditions in which the first humans were portrayed
as God’s creatures endowed with the glorious garments of demoted antago-
nists.76 The transference of the glory of the demoted antagonist can be found,
for example, in the Primary Adam Books, where Satan’s lament about his lost
glory is juxtaposed with the traditions about the glorious garments of the first
humans. Of even greater importance for our study, however, is that some of
these narratives convey how God made the luminous garments for his beloved
protoplasts from the skin of the serpent. This is depicted, for instance, in the
75 Numbers Rabbah 4.8: “… Adam was the world’s firstborn. When he offered his sacrifice, as
it says: And it pleased the Lord better than a bullock that hath horns and hoofs (Ps. LXIX,
32)—he donned high priestly garments; as it says: And the Lord God made for Adam and
for his wife garments of skin, and clothed them (Gen. III, 21). They were robes of honor
which subsequent firstborn used. When Adam died he transmitted them to Seth. Seth
transmitted them to Methusaleh. When Methusaleh died he transmitted them to Noah.”
Freedman and Simon, Midrash Rabbah, 5.101. A similar tradition is also found in Pirke de
Rabbi Eliezer 24: “Rabbi Jehudah said: The coats which the Holy One, blessed be He, made
for Adam and his wife, were with Noah in the ark.” Gerald Friedlander, ed., Pirke de Rabbi
Eliezer (London: Bloch, 1916), 175.
76 For discussions about the luminous garments of the protoplasts, see David Aaron, “Shed-
ding Light on God’s Body in Rabbinic Midrashim: Reflections on the Theory of a Luminous
Adam,” HTR 90 (1997): 299–314; Sebastian Brock, “Clothing Metaphors as a Means of The-
ological Expression in Syriac Tradition,” in Margot Schmidt, ed., Typus, Symbol, Allegorie
bei den östlichen Vätern und ihren Parallelen im Mittelalter, EB 4 (Regensburg: Friedrich
Pustet, 1982), 11–40; April D. DeConick and Jarl Fossum, “Stripped before God: A New
Interpretation of Logion 37 in the Gospel of Thomas,” VC 45 (1991): 123–150 at 141; Nils
Alstrup Dahl and David Hellholm, “Garment-Metaphors: The Old and the New Human
Being,” in Adela Yarbro Collins and Margaret M. Mitchell, eds., Antiquity and Humanity:
Essays on Ancient Religion and Philosophy: Presented to Hans Dieter Betz on his 70th Birth-
day (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 139–158; Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “The Body as Image
of God in Rabbinic Literature,” HTR 87 (1994): 171–195; Benjamin Murmelstein, “Adam,
ein Beitrag zur Messiaslehre,” WZKM 35 (1928): 242–275 at 255; Nissan Rubin and Admiel
Kosman, “The Clothing of the Primordial Adam as a Symbol of Apocalyptic Time in the
Midrashic Sources,” HTR 90 (1997): 155–174; Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Garments of Shame,”
HR 5 (1965/1966): 217–238.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Gen 3:21, a passage which treats the etiology of the
first humans’ glorious attire. According to this text, the original humans were
endowed with luminous garments that had been stripped from the serpent:
And the Lord God made garments of glory for Adam and for his wife from
the skin which the serpent had cast off (to be worn) on the skin of their
(garments of) fingernails of which they had been stripped, and he clothed
them.77
Later midrashim are also cognizant of the enigmatic provenance of the proto-
plasts’ luminous garments. Thus, for example, Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 20 reads:
Rabbi Eliezer said: From skins which the serpent sloughed off, the Holy
One, blessed be He, took and made coats of glory for Adam and his wife,
as it is said, “And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife coats of skin,
and clothed them.”78
Still, other interpretive lines postulate that the clothing was made from the skin
of the Leviathan.79 In relation to this interpretive trajectory, William Whitney
notes that “two late texts (Minhat Yehuda and Sefer Hadar-Zeqenim, both on
77 Michael Maher, ed., Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis, ArBib 1B (Collegeville: Liturgical

Press, 1992), 29. Later rabbinic traditions also hold that the glorious garments of Adam
and Eve were made from the skin of the female Leviathan.
78 Friedlander, Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, 144.
79 In relation to this tradition, Lambden notes that “in his Legends of the Jews, V, p. 103, n. 93
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1955) Ginzberg drew attention to a
probably early and ‘unknown Midrash’ recorded in mediaeval Jewish sources to the effect
that the first couple’s garments were made from the skin of Leviathan, a creature which
figures in a rich variety of myths and traditions recorded in ancient Near Eastern and
biblical texts as well as in certain rabbinic, Christian, Gnostic, magical and other ancient
literatures. This tradition is of considerable interest in the light of Leviathan’s being pic-
tured in rabbinic sources as a creature of great glory (see for example Pes. K. [1876 on Job
41.7]; b. B. Bat. 74b) and the possibility that there existed an early (tannaitic [?]) branch of
Jewish mysticism surrounding Behemoth and Leviathan (reflected in such Gnostic texts
as the cosmological Diagram of the Ophians mentioned in Origen’s Contra Celsum [6.25]
[?]) There appears to be some connection between rabbinic Adam speculation and the
traditions about Leviathan. Garment imagery and eschatological themes are connected
with this complex of traditions.” Stephen Lambden, “From Fig Leaves to Fingernails: Some
Notes on the Garments of Adam and Eve in the Hebrew Bible and Select Early Postbiblical
Jewish Writings,” in Paul Morris and Deborah Sawyer, eds., A Walk in the Garden: Bibli-
cal, Iconographical and Literary Images of Eden, JSOTSS 136 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1992), 74–90 at 87–88.
200 orlov
Gen 3:21) also record a tradition in which the skin of the female Leviathan (pre-
served for the righteous in the world to come) was used to clothe Adam and
Eve.”80
In light of these traditions, the luminous skin of the Leviathan on the high
priest may have additional eschatological and anthropological significance—
namely, the re-clothing of the eschatological Adam in the form of the sacerdo-
tal servant with the garment of light stripped from the Leviathan.
5 Conclusion
Finally, we need to draw attention to the eschatological significance of Levia-

than’s skin, which again, is curiously linked to its function as the cosmological
shell of the Temple. Thus, from the Babylonian Talmud, we learn that in the last
times the luminous skin of the Leviathan will be used in the building material
for the eschatological tabernacle:
Rabbah in the name of R. Johanan further stated: The Holy One, blessed
be He, will in time to come make a tabernacle for the righteous from the
skin of Leviathan; for it is said: Canst thou fill tabernacles with his skin. If
a man is worthy, a tabernacle is made for him; if he is not worthy [of this]
a [mere] covering is made for him, for it is said: And his head with a fish
covering. If a man is [sufficiently] worthy a covering is made for him; if
he is not worthy [even of this], a necklace is made for him, for it is said:
And necklaces about thy neck. If he is worthy [of it] a necklace is made
for him; if he is not worthy [even of this] an amulet is made for him; as it is
said: And thou wilt bind him for thy maidens. The rest [of Leviathan] will
be spread by the Holy One, blessed be He, upon the walls of Jerusalem,
and its splendor will shine from one end of the world to the other; as it is
said: And nations shall walk at thy light, and kings at the brightness of thy
rising.81
Here, the already familiar motif of Leviathan’s skin is used as the outer shell of
the tabernacle of the righteous in the time to come. And not only the taberna-
cle, but even the wall of the Holy City itself will be covered with the skin of the
cosmological reptile.
80 Whitney, Two Strange Beasts, 137. On this see also Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews,
7 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1909–1938), 5.42, note 123.
81 Epstein, The Babylonian Talmud. Baba Bathra, 75a.
What is particular curious in this talmudic excerpt, and something not often
noticed by students of the Leviathan tradition, is the comparison between the
covering for the worthy and the necklace around the neck for the unworthy.
This difference might hint at two functions of the Leviathan’s skin: one that
surrounds the sacred structure akin to the necklace during the normal time,
and one that will become its covering in the messianic time.
This eschatological tradition is important, because it reveals how the sac-
erdotal role of the Leviathan—which was a threating force that surrounded
and constantly jeopardized the Temple during the course of history—is finally
affirmed positively in messianic times.
chapter 11
Moses as the First Priest-Gnostikos in the Works of

Evagrius of Pontus
Robin Darling Young
“Their priests fell by the sword. (Ps 77:64a)

The Logos is speaking against us, if we are not vigilant,
for we believers are the priesthood.”1
First- and second-century Christian texts, following the views of certain

Second-Temple Jewish authors, use the term “priesthood” to refer to the entire
group of the devoted—in the case of the Christian version, to mean the totality
of the observant and baptized.2 By the mid-third century, however, the second-
ranked Christian minister, the presbyter, was beginning to be called sacerdos or,
in Greek, ἱερεύς. In the fourth century, such a usage was increasingly common,
fortified by such authors as Eusebius of Caesarea and the later church orders,
as well as by the incorporation of the church into the Roman imperial state.3
Yet the earlier tradition, held and developed by the teacher Clement of
Alexandria and the presbyter Origen, continued to appear prominently in cer-
tain late-fourth-century writers. Both Alexandrian thinkers connected their
understanding of Christian priesthood with the highest stage of Christian ethi-
cal pedagogy and philosophical insight.4 One of their intellectual heirs was Eva-
1 Origen, Homily 8 on Ps 77; p. 462 in Lorrenzo Perrone, with Marina Molin Pradel, Emanuela
Prinzivalli, und Antonio Cacciari, eds., Origenes Werke Dreizehnter Band: Die neuen Psalmen-
homilien. Eine kritische Edition des Codex Monacensis Graecus 314, GCS NF 19 (Berlin: Walther
de Gruyter, 2015). This translation derives from the English translation to be published by
Joseph W. Trigg in Fathers of the Church (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of Amer-
ica Press, forthcoming). Trigg has translated νήφωμεν as “sober,” but it can also mean “vigilant,”
as I have translated it here.
2 Cf. 1Pet 2:5, 2:9, and Rev 1:6, 5:2 for NT examples.
3 See, for a locus classicus, Eusebius’ “Panegyric on the Church at Tyre,” in Ecclesiastical His-
tory 10.3. For a recent discussion, Jeremy M. Schott, “Eusebius’ Panegyric on the Building of
Churches,” in Sabrina Inowlocki and Claudio Zamagni, eds, Reconsidering Eusebius: Collected
Papers on Literary, Historical and Theological Issues (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2011), 177–198.
4 For Clement of Alexandria, see primarily Bogdan G. Bucur, “The Other Clement of Alexandria:
Cosmic Hierarchy and Interiorized Apocalypticism,” VC 60.3 (2006): 251–267; idem, Angelo-
morphic Pneumatology: Clement of Alexandria and Other Early Christian Witnesses (Leiden,

moses as the first priest-gnostikos 203
grius of Pontus, ordained both as a reader and a deacon according to his earliest
hagiographer Palladius, and later a celebrated ascetic living in Kellia, Egypt.5
Writer of exegetical scholia, letters, and treaties, Evagrius is best known for giv-
ing directions in conduct and contemplation to male and female ascetics, espe-
cially regarding the battle against “thoughts,” and for more advanced ascetics,
the preparation to understand in a noetic way the self, the cosmos, and the
divine being.
At the same time, other fourth-century thinkers—Evagrius’ fellow-authors
of Pontus and Cappadocia as well as his future acquaintance Didymus the
Blind—considered Moses a prototype of Christian leadership and particularly
of contemplative insight. For them, Moses was both a gnostikos (whether or
not they used the precise term) and priest.
Moses—prophet, lawgiver, philosopher and intimate of God—was an allur-
ing subject in Christian writings of the late fourth century. Writers of the period
were engaged in the vast and communal task of creating a body of knowledge
needed for a church now characterized by its interconnected instruction, offi-
cials, ritual and intellectual ambitions. By the end of the century, some were
articulating genuine philosophy, which in the period forced it into generating
and rapidly accumulating a comprehensive explanation of the world and its
history. Their scriptural basis was primarily the Old Testament, in which, for
this purpose, Moses’ was the most salient voice.6
But how did Moses become the predecessor of the contemplative priest-
hood? As the ascetic movement grew in that same period, many of its writers
explained it within this same philosophical framework, accounting for its way
of life and its goals within the broader parameters of Christian intellectuals’
self-explanation. Among ascetic writers, Evagrius of Pontus was one of these—
the first to provide a clear curriculum for the ascetic life, he also turned his ear-
lier education toward the creation of a comprehensive and specialized account
of that life, in which he like others claimed and reorganized older knowledge.
And like others, Evagrius took as predecessor and guide the figure of Moses—
Boston: Brill, 2009); for Origen, John McGuckin, “Origen of Alexandria on the Mystery of the
Pre-Existent Church,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 6:3 (2006):
207–222 and Theo Hermans, Origène: Théologie sacrificielle du sacerdoce des chrétiens, Théolo-
gie Historique 102 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1996), and generally, Laurence Ryan, “Patristic Teaching
on the Priesthood of the Faithful,” ITQ 19 (1962) 25–51.
5 The best guide to the life and thought of Evagrius remains Antoine Guillaumont, Un philo-
sophe au désert Evagre le Pontique (Paris: Vrin, 2004).
6 For a recent discussion, see Anthony Grafton and Megan Hale Williams, Christianity and the
Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 2006).
204 young
both as a model, and as a source, certifying the deep antiquity of a monastic

community whose origins were, actually, recent.
Likewise, Christ also increasingly came to be portrayed as a priest, following
the description of him in the Epistle to the Hebrews as the great high priest.
Now he would also come to be compared in this way with Moses. Although
the early Christian understanding of Jesus’ actions, person and teachings dom-
inated controversial writing from Constantine through Justinian, Jesus had
remained elusive—his career was short, he left no writings, and he had refused
to definitively identify himself. From the writings of Paul forward he was
implicitly or explicitly compared with Moses—perhaps not only because of
Jesus’ own comparisons of himself to the lawgiver, but also because Jesus’ scrip-
tural career was brief and recent, while Moses dominated the first five books
of the Septuagint, framing and forming the story of Israel, frequently encoun-
tering God, and leading the elect people—a story imposing in itself, but also
casting a long shadow over Jesus as Moses’ successor—yet also providing a
guide to the priestly aspect of Jesus’ work.7
Furthermore, Moses already had a wide reputation outside the communi-
ties claiming him as their lawgiver. Earlier Jewish authors had made Moses
into a Hellenistic figure, but better, older and wiser—and as the real source of
Greek philosophy, one whom their non-Jewish readers could admire and envy.8
When Philo of Alexandria inherited this interpretation, it was already almost
two hundred years old, and in conversation with the pagan literary scholars of
Alexandria he deepened and expanded it.9 When Christian scholars of the sec-
ond century included Philo’s works in their libraries, his thought could be put to
use in a tradition that already claimed Moses as Jesus’ forerunner.10 Once they
had adopted Philo into their own libraries, they gained a much deeper account
of Moses as the originator of all the written knowledge valuable for humanity
in its reformation and adherence to the one God, the God of Israel.11
7 The earliest Christian claims are discussed recently in John Lierman, The New Testament
Moses: Christian Perceptions of Moses and Israel in the Setting of Jewish Religion, WUNT 173
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006).
8 For instance, in the works of Aristobulus: see Erich Gruen, Diaspora: Jews Amidst Greeks
and Romans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 222–224; or for the more
general interest in Moses, John Gager, Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism (Nashville, TN:
Abingdon Press, 1972).
9 Now see Maren R. Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
10 Arthur Droge, Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989), 49–167.
11 David T. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1993), 87–
153.
Christian authors of the second and later centuries grasped, preserved and
expanded Philo’s view of Moses. The Alexandrian Christian tradition, primarily
of Clement and Origen, and the comprehensive account of Moses as divinely-
guided philosopher it adopted, became diffused in the fourth century—
through the medium of Origen’s library preserved in Caesarea and Eusebius’
work based on it, and by means of teachers in Alexandria and the Christian
schools of Egypt. Thanks at least in part to the third-century mission of Origen’s
student Gregory Thaumaturgus, the works of Origen formed an important part
of the library of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa.
Each man knew and adapted the works of the prior Alexandrian tradition—
and each one wrote of Moses as a model of virtue and illumination.12
But these interpretations by Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus, indebted as
they were to the prior tradition of Christian interpretation, now circled specif-
ically around the person and role of the holy bishop. In the late fourth century,
those bishops needed a precedent for leadership that derived from the canon
of scripture they were authorized to interpret. The first bishop to attempt this
had been Eusebius of Caesarea, who in the first decades of the century turned
to Moses as a forerunner not only for Jesus, as earlier exegetes had done, but
for the bishop and even for Constantine, the great liberator and defender of
Christianity.13 Now, at the end of the century, Moses’ role in the political orga-
nization of Israel’s civic and cultic life came to seem especially appealing as a
model and a justification for their exercise of authority in the church.
Most scholars have focused primarily upon the ascetic works of Evagrius,
and, following the lead of his biographers, understood him primarily within
a monastic world of the late fourth century. But Evagrius’ interests were much
broader than this customary interpretation suggests.14 Where others have
defended Evagrius’ orthodox intent or pastoral practice, Antoine Guillaumont
12 Most recently for these bishops as authors and their image of Moses, see Claudia Rapp,
Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 126–127, 132–133.
13 Now see Michael J. Hollerich, “Eusebius’ Moses: Hebrew, Jew, and Christian,” (forthcom-
ing).
14 Most scholars of Evagrius have given little attention to his scholia on Psalms, Proverbs and
Ecclesiastes, published (or in the case of the Psalms scholia, forthcoming) in critical edi-
tions by Paul Géhin. These scholia, however, seem to be directed not toward ascetics, but
toward educated readers of scripture who are receptive to an allegorical interpretation.
An English translation of these collections of scholia is being prepared by Carl Venner-
strom and Ian Gerdon. In the meantime, see Paul Géhin, Évagre le Pontique, Scholies aux
Proverbes, SC 340 (Paris: Cerf, 1987); idem, Scholies à L’Ecclésiaste (Paris: Cerf, 1993) and
Marie-Josèphe Rondeau, “Le Commentaire sur les Psaumes d’ Evagre le Pontique,” OCP 26
(1960): 307–348.
206 young
described Evagrius as an Origenist and a philosophe. Guillaumont was cer-

tainly correct to connect Evagrius with the broad stream of Origenism in the
fourth century—stretching, among Greek writers, from Eusebius through John
Chrysostom and the fifth-century church historians and among Latin writers
from Ambrose through John Cassian and Gennadius.
Less well-discussed are the reasons for Evagrius’ particular brand of “Ori-
genism.” Though those reasons cannot be described adequately within the
compass of an essay, it is possible to show how Evagrius extended Origen’s
understanding of the priesthood in his own work and in his primary intellec-
tual circle, and how he preserved Clement’s understanding of the Christian
gnostikos—the teacher of advanced students—as the sage who brings stu-
dents to the level of the priesthood to which all believers should belong.
Although themes of priesthood appear frequently in Evagrius’ works, several
of his works discuss the priest or the priesthood. Moses appears as the type of
the priesthood in the four opening verses of the treatise On Prayer:
1. If someone should wish to prepare fragrant incense, he will combine,

according to the Law, pure frankincense, cassia, onycha and myrrh in
equal amounts (Ex 30:34–35). These refer to the four primary virtues [pru-
dence, justice, temperance, courage (Protagoras 330B)], for if they are
fully and equally present, the mind will not be betrayed.
2. When the soul has been purified by the full complement of the
virtues, it stabilizes the attitude of the mind and prepares it to receive
the desired state (κατάστασις).
3. Prayer is a communion of the mind with God. What sort of state does
the mind need so that it can reach out to its Lord without turning back
and commune with him without intermediary? (see Clement, Stromateis
7.7.39, Maximus of Tyre, Lectures 4.7).
4. If Moses, when he tried to approach the earthly burning bush, was
held back until he removed the sandals from his feet (Ex 3:5), how can
you, who wish to see and commune with the one who is beyond all rep-
resentation and sense perception, not free yourself from every mental
representation tied to the passions?
But Evagrius’ most well-known works—the Gnostic Trilogy of Praktikos, Gnos-

tikos and Kephalaia Gnostika—also repeatedly refer to priesthood. In Praktikos,
for instance, Evagrius begins with an allegorical reading of the monastic gar-
ment that anticipate his allegorical reading of the priest’s garment, later in
Kephalaia Gnostika. Here, ambition for the priesthood appears as a demonic
temptation:
The thought of vainglory is a most subtle one and readily insinuates itself
within the virtuous person with the intention of publishing his struggles
and hunting after the esteem that comes from people (cf. 1 Thess 2:6). It
invents demons crying out, women being healed and a crowd touching his
garments (cf. Matt 9:20–21, Mark 5:27); it even predicts to him that he
will eventually attain the priesthood. It has people come to seek him at
his door, and if he should be unwilling he will be taken away in bonds.
When this thought has thus raised him aloft on empty hopes, it flies off,
abandoning him to be tempted either by the demon of pride or by that
of sadness, who brings upon him further thoughts opposed to his hopes.
Sometimes it delivers him over to the demon of fornication, he who a little
earlier was a holy priest carried off in bonds!
Priests themselves, as distinguished from the priesthood as an object of ambi-

tion, Evagrius places in a kind of hierarchy between “all the brothers” and “the
[ascetic] elders.” Here, priests are beloved, because they perform the liturgy and
pray for the monks, seemingly as ascetics’ assistants:
It is not possible to love all the brothers equally, but it is possible to meet
all without passion when we are free from hatred and resentment. [102]
[We are] to love priests after our Lord, those who by means of the holy
mysteries purify us and pray on our behalf. [103] [We are] to revere the
elders (γέροντας) as angels, for they are those who ready us for the contest
and heal our bites from wild beasts.
Yet in the second book of the trilogy, Evagrius views priests from a different
angle. The Gnostikos is a manual for those who teach ascetics, and Evagrius
considers the gnostikos to be a sage who educates priests as carefully, and with
as much discretion and accommodation as he educates younger monks:
Give an answer to the priests only when they ask you—and [only] to those
who are diligent in the fear of God—about the mysteries that are accom-
plished by them and purify our inner person, and about the receptacle
and crucible that are in us. It is a demonstration of the impassioned and
the rational parts of the soul—and what is their inseparable mingling and
when one part overcomes another part. And every one of the actions is
the accomplishment of one type. Then tell them: the mystery of the one
doing these things, and of those [doing] them along with him, chasing
off those who prevent us from living in purity; and who among the living
beings have memory, and who do not.
208 young
But not until the ascetic philosopher is prepared to read the Kephalaia Gnos-
tika, however, would he or she be prepared to understand the genuine priest-
hood. Here Evagrius lets readers know that the gnostikos actually performs a
priestly service for others. Where the ascetic formerly had to combat thoughts,
the priesthood—the goal of the Christian life—now appears as a state of con-
templative development, not an office in a local church or monastic establish-
ment. Evagrius here has replaced the symbolic meaning of the monastic robe,
i.e. to protect the ascetic in combat with demonic “thoughts,” with a priestly
robe, albeit invisible, that signifies his ability to act as a priest for other Chris-
tians. Here Evagrius interprets Exodus, a book of Moses who is, for him, the
authority on the true priesthood:
4.48 The intelligible “turban” (Exod 28:4) is faith, unwavering and inca-
pable of fear.
4.52 The intelligible “rosette” (Exod 28:36) is the knowledge of the Holy
Trinity.
4.56 The intelligible ephod (Exod 28:4) is the state of the rational soul in
which a person customarily serves its virtues.
4.63 The “mercy seat” (Exod 25:17) is spiritual knowledge that leads the
souls of those who serve.
4.66 The breastplate (Exod 28:4) is the hidden knowledge of God’s mys-
teries.
4.69 The intelligible robe (Exod 28:4) is the spiritual teaching that gath-
ers those who have gone astray.
4.72 The intelligible undergarment (Ex 28:42) is the mortification of the
concupiscible part, which comes about for the sake of the knowledge
of God.
4.75 The intelligible ephod (Exod 28:4) is the soul’s righteousness by
which a person is customarily made illustrious by deeds and by
blameless teachings.
4.79 The girdle of the high priest is his humility of zeal that girds the
mind.
4.88 Of the three altars of knowledge two have a circle, and the third
appears without a circle.
4.89 The knowledge of God requires, not a chattering (dialectical?) soul,
but a seeing one. The chattering in fact, is customarily found among
souls which are not pure; but sight is only among pure souls.
5.44 If “the anger of dragons is wine” (Deut 32:33) and the Nazirites
abstain from wine (Num 6:3) it follows that the Nazirites are com-
manded to be without anger.
5.45 The mind is named the head of the soul and the virtues are the sign
of the hair. When he is deprived of this, the Nazirite will be separated
from knowledge and led away bound by his enemies.
5.46 The High Priest is the one who supplicates God on behalf of the
entire rational nature, and he separates some from wickedness and
others from ignorance.
5.53 The spiritual sacrifice is the pure conscience, which is placed on the
state of the mind as on an altar.
5.84 The intelligible Temple is the pure mind, which now has in it “God’s
wisdom filled with rich variety” (Eph 3:10). The Temple of God is the
one who is a visionary of the holy unity, and the altar of God is the
contemplation of the Holy Trinity.
5.88 Zion is a sign of the first knowledge and Egypt the indication of all
wickedness, but the symbol of natural contemplation is Jerusalem,
where Mount Zion is, the citadel of the city.
6.90 Whoever is made worthy of spiritual knowledge will assist the holy
angels, and will bring back the rational beings from vice to virtue and
from ignorance to knowledge. Examine our words, our brothers, and
explain with diligence the symbols of the centuries in the number of
the six days of creation.15
Evagrius of Pontus had in turn been a student of Basil and Gregory of Nazian-
zus, and since his thinking resembles Gregory of Nyssa’s, he might well be
expected to have imitated the mild Origenism of his older contemporaries. Yet
the interruption in 382 of his career in Constantinople led him in a different
direction. His interpretation of Moses follows more closely the works of Origen
and Clement, almost two centuries earlier than his own career. For this change
in direction Melania and Rufinus were indirectly and possibly directly respon-
sible.16 They had Origen’s works available in Jerusalem, and Evagrius may have
read Origen, and Origen’s interpretation of Moses, there. Melania had clothed
Evagrius as a monk and sent him to Egypt, to study with her monastic friends
15 Kephalaia Gnostika, S2, translation by Robin Darling Young, Joel Kalvesmaki, Columba
Stewart, Luke Dysinger, and Charles Stang (New York: Oxford University Press), forthcom-
ing.
16 See the discussions of Rufinus, Melania and their associates, including Evagrius, in Eliz-
abeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian
Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Jon Dechow, Dogma and Mysticism
in Early Christianity: Epiphanius of Cyprus and the Legacy of Origen (Macon, GA: Mercer,
1988); and Michael W. O’Laughlin, Origenism in the Desert: Anthropology and Integration
in Evagrius Ponticus (Ph.D. diss.; Harvard University, 1987).
210 young
and collaborators, and in Nitria he may have encountered Origen’s works and
those of Clement, interpreted by his teachers Macarius the Great and Macarius
of Egypt either orally or in writings that are now lost. He may well have known
the letters of Anthony, which mention Moses in the monastic context; but he
most likely began there, in Nitria and Kellia, the work of adapting Clement and
Origen’s thought, and thus also their thought on Moses, to the needs of the
monastic life, as he saw them.17
Evagrius applied to that situation the three-level moral and contemplative
curriculum—the paidetic mystagogy18—that gave form to the aim of Origen’s
entire body of work. Evagrius also revived Clement of Alexandria’s description
of the Christian philosopher as a Gnōstikos;19 and with these elements he also
adopted their earlier writings concerning Moses, bending them to the new,
monastic moment in Christian philosophical discourse.
The following essay shows how Moses is the exemplar and living guide for
the gnostic monk, according to Evagrius. Moses’ teachings inform the πρακτική,
the part of the monk’s life when through constant struggle the virtues supplant
the vicious and demonic reasonings and missteps; he shows how this effort
makes Moses one of the first friends of God; and he exemplifies the gnostic who
both teaches others and provides the pattern by which the monastic specifi-
cally as a gnostic priest gains the contemplation of nature and of the Trinity
that is the proper end of human life. Because Evagrius usually wrote his works
as collections of kephalaia, he writes few extended discussions of biblical texts
in which Moses is the main subject; exegetical approaches of the Alexandrian
17 Antoine Guillaumont, Les ‘Kephalaia Gnostica’ d’Evagre le Pontique et l’ histoire de l’ origé-

nisme chez les grecs et chez les syriens (Paris: Seuil, 1962), and idem, Un philosophe au desert:
Evagre le Pontique (Paris: Vrin, 2004).
18 Among numerous discussions of the pedagogical structure of Origen’s thought, see Mar-
guerite Harl, Origène et la fonction revélatrice du verbe incarné (Paris: Seuil, 1958) and more
recently, and responding to contemporary intellectual currents, Vlad Niculescu, The Spell
of the Logos: Origen’s Exegetic Pedagogy in the Continuing Debate Regarding Logocentrism
(Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2009). For Evagrius’ continuation of Origen’s “paidetic mysta-
gogy” see the same author’s perceptive treatment of Evagrius’ adaptation of the Alexan-
drian tradition in Vlad Niculescu, “Coping with the Grief of Ignorance. Evagrius Ponticus’s
Hermeneutics of the Distance between God and Humanity,” Arches: Revue Internationale
des Sciences Humaines 7 (2004).
19 Antoine Guillaumont, “Le gnostique chez Clément d’ Alexandrie et chez Evagre le Pon-
tique,” in Alexandrina: Hellénisme, judaïsme et christianisme à Alexandrie. Mélanges offerts
au P. Claude Mondésert (Paris: Cerf, 1987), 195–201. Also see the current author’s discussion
of Evagrius’ adaptation of passages of Clement’s Stromateis: Robin Darling Young, “Xen-
iteia According to Evagrius of Pontus,” in Blake Leyerle and Robin Darling Young, eds.,
Ascetic Culture: Essays in Honor of Philip Rousseau (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2013), 229–252.
tradition are presupposed. Nonetheless, Moses emerges across Evagrius’ ascetic

and philosophical works as a mind who has learned, from the world he observes
and from his own, now peaceable, body and soul, how to return to himself.
1 Evagrius’ Turn to Origenian Exegesis
Perhaps when Evagrius had assisted bishops as, first, a reader for Basil, bishop
of Caesarea, and then a deacon for Gregory of Nazianzus, he had understood
Moses as a pattern for the ascetic bishop. According to their understanding of
Moses, the monk-turned-bishop was like Moses in that he had been tempered
by an encounter with God in solitude, and was now made ready, like Moses, to
emerge into public life and lead the people in his charge.
It is possible that Evagrius had heard Basil’s Homilies on the Hexaēmeron at
their delivery in 370; it is likely that the future monk had helped write Gre-
gory’s orations against the Arians, traditionally called the Theological Orations.
The first and second of those orations picture the theologian as one who, like
Moses, ascends Sinai alone after preparation and purification, to bring back
divine knowledge while others must remain lower on the slopes of the moun-
tain.20 The similarities between Evagrius’ thought and that of Gregory of Nyssa,
thoroughly demonstrated by Kevin Corrigan, make it plausible that he knew
the latter’s Life of Moses, or at least knew of Gregory’s interpretation of the patri-
arch.21
Yet although Evagrius knew the interpretation of Moses put forward by his
teachers, he did not reproduce it once he began his own literary work, after
383, in the monastic settlements of Egypt. For Evagrius, Moses was not primar-
ily a leader or a lawgiver, though he certainly did foreshadow Christ. Evagrius
evidently had to incorporate Moses into his interpretation of the monastic life
pursued in exurban Nitria and Kellia, where monks were virtually autonomous,
and where Moses did not prefigure the Christian bishop. Furthermore, all the
remaining works of Evagrius date from after his tutelage in Cappadocia and in
Constantinople; Evagrius developed his philosophy and his biblical interpre-
tation under the influence of the Alexandrian tradition. He may have gained
direct knowledge of that tradition only when he departed from Constantinople.
20 See, most recently, the discussion in Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church:
Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2012), 411–412.
21 Kevin Corrigan, Evagrius and Gregory: Mind, Soul and Body in the Fourth Century (Farn-
ham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 185–186.
212 young
His first exposure to the thought of Origen, and probably of Clement of Alexan-
dria as well, came from the community of Melania and Rufinus on the Mount
of Olives in Jerusalem. Evagrius became associated with this community under
circumstances left unclear by Palladius, whose biographical note on Evagrius
concentrated upon his flight from Constantinople;22 but he must have joined
their project of appreciating the works of Origen; even when he had departed
Jerusalem for Egypt, he continued to correspond with both teachers. As trans-
lators of Origen, Rufinus and Melania intended to introduce the Alexandrian’s
works to the Latin-speaking West of the fourth century; but when Evagrius set-
tled in Nitria, he met teachers who evidently had continued to develop the
thought of Origen in its Greek, Egyptian setting, as a basis for monastic contem-
plative practice. Both Evagrius’ letters back to Rufinus and Melania, preserved
in the Syriac letters collection, and his collections of treatises, pedagogical
kephalaia, and scholia on biblical works, show that he had both joined their
effort to develop the thought of Origen, and had learned from those ascetics
in Egypt who knew Origen’s and Clement’s works, and adapted them to their
own, specifically monastic, efforts.
Rather, Moses was for Evagrius a model of the practical life, in which
thoughts prompted by demons are fought and virtues cultivated; an example
of gentleness; a friend of the savior; a contemplative observer of nature visi-
ble and hidden; and, finally, a Gnōstikos and priest of a spiritual temple he had
foreseen. The following essay discusses in turn these aspects of Moses in the
interpretation of Evagrius.
These are the seeds with which Evagrius of Pontus, possibly drawing from
the work of Gregory of Nazianzus, and somewhat more remotely, perhaps
drawing upon Gregory of Nyssa’s retelling of Philo’s Life of Moses, sowed Moses
into his teaching and made him a gnostikos and ascetic. It will be seen that
there are several moments in the creation of this monastic Moses—moments
that show how Evagrius takes Moses and inserts him into his own program of
ascetic development. Evagrius retrieves the approach of Clement of Alexandria
and elaborates several stages in the life of Moses—stages that also exemplify
the progress of the monastic Gnōstikos and that, by implication, can be soon to
turn Evagrius himself into an exemplary Moses.
22 Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 8. Cuthbert Butler, The Lausiac History (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1898–1904).
2 Moses and the πρακτική
As lawgiver, Moses made an inviting subject for a monastic author like Eva-
grius, who himself created or transmitted regulations: among other works, he
assembled collections of short statements as guides for those just beginning
the monastic life. Since Evagrius had read and followed Clement and Origen’s
treatments, he understood the Pentateuch as upholding and illuminating the
πρακτική.
So, for example, Evagrius writes two letters to rebuke the ascetic deacon
Severa, who had proposed to travel (possibly from Jerusalem where she may
have lived in Melania’s community) to visit and seek counsel from him. His
Letter Seven explains to Severa his reluctance to have a visit from a woman; Let-
ter Eight, confirming his judgment, is probably to Melania.23 In the latter, he
accounts for his refusal, and his rebuke of Severa:
Paul it is who “will conquer with the weapons of the right and of the
left.” (2Cor 6:7) But of me, then, this is [right] to say: “my wounds grow
stagnant and fester in the presence of my follies,” (Ps 37:6) and, further,
“pardon my sin, for it is great.” (Ps 24:11) These things are being said to me
by your holy letters. Teach your sisters and your (female ascetic?) children
not to undertake a lengthy journey, and not to go into desert places with-
out testing, for this is alien to every soul that has withdrawn far from the
world.
For it is right for everyone who wishes to pursue the path of virtue to
guard not only against the sin which is in an action, but also not to offend
by means of a reasoning (λογισμός). For the warning that is about sin that is
in action belongs to Moses, but that which is about the λογισμός is a warning
which comes from Our Savior (Matt 5:28f., Mk 7:21) [emphasis mine]. And
I am astounded if there is a woman who, going around and meeting with
many persons, is able to perfect this way of life.
23 The Syriac version of the lost Greek text of Evagrius’ letters exists in a diplomatic edi-
tion of one manuscript, BL Add. 14578, printed in Wilhelm Frankenberg, ed., Evagrius
Ponticus, Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen,
Philologisch-historische Klasse NF 13.2 (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1912). It has
been introduced, translated, annotated and the probable recipients identified by Gabriel
Bunge, ed., Evagrios Pontikos: Briefe aus der Wüste (Trier: Paulinus, 1986) with subsequent
Polish and Italian translations; various letters have been translated into English; for cur-
rent bibliography see http://evagriusponticus.net/corpus.htm. An English translation will
be published in the Fathers of the Church series, by the author of this essay.
214 young
But although Moses appears as an example of avoiding a “sin in action”

(where the Syriac probably translates πράγμα) in the above letter to Melania,
he can also be an example of the battle with thoughts. In the only letter to be
preserved nearly whole in Greek, Evagrius writes to a correspondent, evidently
dwelling in Jerusalem, who had been a high imperial official before becoming
a monk:
2. But in regard to the other [tempting-] thoughts you fail to understand

that they proceed from the heart and soil the mind; and if it mentally con-
sents to them, it draws near to sin. And there is a contradiction [ἀντίρρη-
σις] against them, in regard to both intention and action. For consenting
to sin, even in thought, is accounted as sin. And see how Moses teaches you,
saying “Do not agree [or, perhaps, “make a pact”] with them!” (Deut 7:22).24
And in the Gospel the Lord condemns the νοῦς as adulterer that only looks
passionately on a woman (Matt 5:28), as well as one that mentally angers a
brother [emphasis mine].
3. These commandments uproot from the heart [any] consent to law-
lessness, and prepare in the νοῦς the way for the Lord. But the ignorant
regard it as foolish to undertake this path, and imagine they fulfill the
apostolic path in a single moment, as if keeping the commandments were
hindered only through physical suffering: for the [tempting-] thoughts
that arise from these are transitory, while envy and resentment endure
into old age.
4. Perhaps the [tempting-] thoughts of the praetorium do not afflict
you; but is it not possible that you are afflicted by [tempting-] thoughts of
vainglory? Take care that although physically in “Jerusalem” your spirit is
distant from “Bethany” through which your tempting thoughts of avarice
and its associated failings incline towards shopping, buying and selling
salt, vinegar, and bread, while there are starving thousands deserving of
daily bread!
24 The Syriac translation possibly reflects Deut 7:1–2, a portion of the specification of 6:4. This
passage lists the nations occupying the land of promise, and forbids cooperation between
the Israelites and the occupants of the land: “When the Lord your God gives them over
to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with
them and show them no mercy.” Evagrius believes that the author, Moses, understands
the text as allegorical, and referring to the demons with whom the monk must not agree
in action; Jesus agrees, and specifies that agreeing with the thoughts them prompt is also
forbidden.
Evagrius has here directed his letter toward a correspondent whom he fears
may be tempted to think that his presence in the city of Jerusalem, in a land
that had rapidly become a pilgrimage site, ensures his progress in the ascetic
life; Moses, with Jesus, then become teachers who reinforce each other’s spe-
cific commands to renounce sinful actions and their accompanying thoughts.
In accordance with his role here as ascetic teacher, Evagrius habitually inter-
prets biblical texts as if they address the ascetic life directly, and even primarily.
Several extracts from Evagrius’ early works can demonstrate how Moses fig-
ures as an exemplar. Several of Evagrius’ works in effect function as rules that
Evagrius writes to friends, rules about the monastic life. In the period in which
he wrote, there were few set rules of life; exemplars and stories circulated, along
with letters. Evagrius eventually settled on collections of kephalaia for medita-
tion, but some of his earlier works, like Foundations of the Monastic Life, and
To Eulogius, are clearly meant to function as rules though they are ostensibly
addressed to only one person.
The latter deals extensively with the wealthy young man who has taken up
the monastic life. For instance, in his new company, his luxuries must go: “As
for one who has been recently admitted to the radiant assembly of monks, let
him drive away the thoughts coming to him from his family that hold out praise
as bait, in order that he might not seek people’s praise but the beatitude that
comes from the commandments.”25
Like his love of praise is the beginning monk’s tendency to need the admira-
tion that comes from a display of wardrobe. It is interesting to consider a case
in which monastics would have arrived in Nitria with trunks of clothing, but
nonetheless Evagrius writes:
Do not dress yourself in the finest clothes, lest you quite blatantly put on
the demon of vainglory, for the virtues are not born in the beauty of one’s
clothes, but in the beauty of the soul ascetic works are worn as golden
embroideries.
23/24
As in Foundations, Evagrius here joins this rule to a rare warning of hell: “fear
of the inextinguishable worm”, an idea he dropped in later works. But his point
here is to recommend that a new monk obtain an experienced teacher. The
new monk, beginning the life of the praktikos, needs to labor at the virtues, but
25 Robert E. Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2003), 49.
216 young
only with the guidance of a teacher: “He who through his experience makes
known the error of the thoughts will not be recognized by all, except for those
with experience, for experience constitutes the path towards the gnostic life at
this stage. The ground for both of them is the practical life; and if we lay hold
of this with greater ascetic effort, we will come to know ourselves, we will pass
judgment on thoughts and we will come to know god.”
3 Moses as Example of a Monk Guided with a Rule of Life
For Evagrius Moses can also stand, not just as an example of one who pur-
sues virtuous action and repels λογισμοί ([tempting-] thoughts), but as one who
himself requires a guide, and in whose relationship with Jethro Evagrius finds
an example of a beginning monk advised by a senior. Perhaps he also is thinking
here of Moses as the recipient of advice from a learned teacher not within the
church—just as Evagrius like earlier Alexandrians had incorporated Graeco-
Roman ethics and philosophy into his teaching, or occasionally indicated his
opinion that pagan wisdom concurred with Christian. As a Midianite, Zippo-
rah’s father Jethro was a priest who anticipated the priesthood established by
Moses and Aaron, and was brought to bless Moses’ God (Exod 18:10).
In Eulogius 23, Evagrius is setting out instructions for one whom he expects
to be part of a monastic community. It is not obvious from the treatise itself,
but here and in a related passage in the Gnōstikos, Evagrius intertwines his own
text with Exodus 18, the story of Jethro’s instruction of Moses in the wilderness
before Moses’ ascent of Mt. Sinai. In turn, Evagrius’ interpretation rests upon
the interpretation of Moses established by Origen in his Homilies on Exodus,
and on the portrait of Moses in Clement’s Stromateis, book 1 (itself mediating
Philo’s Life of Moses). Four sentences in the middle of the paragraph establish
these connections, and their logical sequence makes clear that Evagrius consid-
ers both Jethro the pagan and Moses the prophet to be models for the Gnōstikos.
He who through his experience (πεῖρα) makes known the error (πλανή) of
the thoughts (λογισμοί) will not be recognized (εὔγνωστος) by all, except
for those with experience, for experience constitutes the path towards the
gnostic life at this stage. The cause (αἰτία) of both of them is the practical
life; and if we lay hold of greater toil, we will more fully know ourselves,
we will resist the thoughts, and we will more fully know God. As for the
person experienced in the emigration of the practical life and the home-
coming of the gnostic life, who anoints the simple with the skill (τεχνή)
of the thoughts—let him watch, let him not boast about the gnostic life
to make a show for his own glory. But if a thought steals in, extolling him
[i.e. the gnostic teacher], let him take for his assistance the novice Jethro
who gave to Moses, the great prophet, as a result of grace, a wise counsel
and discernment (σοφὴ συμβουλίαν καὶ διάκρισιν).
Evagrius has taken the story of Jethro’s visit to Moses in Exodus 18 as a proto-
type of the instruction that one teacher can give to another. The appearance, in
the Septuagint translation of the chapter, of the various forms of the verb γιγνώ-
σκω made it an appealing text for a thinker who was reviving and extending the
attempt to claim gnōsis for orthodox Christian teaching in the monastic con-
text; but as we shall see, Origen’s interpretation of the text—without reference
to gnōsis, a term he tended to avoid—strongly influenced Evagrius’ interpreta-
tion as well.
Apparently Evagrius saw in this story an instance of pedagogy, for which
reason he called Jethro a μεγαλώνυμος—a word signifying novice, freshman,
or even a catechumen. In Exod 18:10–12 (LXX), Jethro is presented as having
blessed the Lord, confessing that he knows (ἔγνων) the Lord to be “greater than
all the gods,” and finally acting as a priest bringing “an entirely-burnt offering
and sacrifices to God.” Here Jethro has shown in summary fashion the steps of
initiation or mystagogy appealing to a monastic teacher in Egypt—he has come
into the desert, bringing to Moses a wife and two sons who promptly disappear
from the story, and going “into the tabernacle,” a word with a range of meanings
including, of course, a symbol both of the church and of heaven.
Moses had, in Exod 3:1 and 4:18, already taken refuge with Jethro both before
and after his encounter with God in the burning bush. But here Moses has
begun to lead the journey of the Israelites to the land of promise—a narra-
tive that also signified, in the Alexandrian tradition, the departure from sin and
a journey into an increasing knowledge of God. Eulogius 23, though, centers
around Exod 3:18–27. There Jethro observes Moses’ daily judging of the peo-
ple of Israel; Jethro advises Moses to take their cases before God, and to “teach
them the statutes and instructions” they will need, and in addition setting over
them subordinate judges. Jethro is, in short, advising Moses as both a teacher
and a judge, proposing a form of community regulation—and also, in the order
of the Exodus story, a catalyst for Moses’ receiving the commandments on Mt.
Sinai after following Jethro’s instructions.
In this passage from Eulogius, Evagrius has been guided by Origen’s Homily
11 on Exodus of some 140 years earlier.26 In his Caesarean years, when Origen
26 I use here the translation by Ronald E. Heine, Origen, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus,
Fathers of the Church 71 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1982).
218 young
preached these homilies, he may have been asked about the apparently odd sit-
uation in which a pagan has instructed the great prophet and lawgiver; Origen’s
opinion was this:
As I see it, Jethro did not come to Moses in vain, nor was it in vain that he
ate bread with the elders of the people in the presence of the Lord. For he
gives counsel to Moses that is commendable enough, and useful.27
Later Origen favorably contrasts Moses, who accepts counsel from a pagan,
with “those who preside over the people”—surely, bishops—and do not even
listen to “lower priests,” much less laymen or gentiles. And this is true even if the
bishop has not “already received revelations from God, but if he has some merit
of knowledge of the Law.” Moses, on the other hand, “who was ‘meek above all
men,’ accepted the counsel of a lower man [Jethro] both that he might give a
model of humility to the leaders of the people and represent an image of the
future mystery.”28
Moses, writes Origen, knew that in the future the gentiles would offer a spir-
itual understanding of the law to God, whereby Jethro’s sacrifice stands for
that future spiritual understanding. Yet Jethro serves a second purpose in Ori-
gen’s interpretation, representing the gentiles who will join Israel in service to
God. In another homily on Exodus, Origen remarked that “philosophy is neither
opposed to everything in the Law of God, nor in harmony with everything.”29
Moses’ acceptance of Jethro’s counsel, for Origen, accords with his own regard
for pagan moral philosophy. For Evagrius, the relationship between Jethro and
Moses seems to recall not only the acceptance of pagan learning and moral
philosophy, valuable and necessary for Christian scriptural interpretation and
moral practice. Jethro seems to be Moses’ elder, one who advises him in the
desert, and therefore his role in the story is similar to the role of a gnostic
teacher in Evagrius’ own ascetic circle in the “desert” of Nitria and Kellia.
4 Moses as Author of a Treatise on Nature
In addition to his position as both teacher and student in Evagrius’ thought,

Moses precisely as a gnostic teacher and one who by definition had attained
ἀπαθεῖα, or stillness, was able to gain knowledge of the workings of the created
27 Homily 11, p. 362.

28 Homily 11, p. 364.
29 Homily 9 on Exodus, p. 199.
world by means of the λόγοι of things—to see their inner architecture. In his
Praktikos, Evagrius examines how the passions are stimulated, in order to pre-
scribe remedies for them; he cites Moses as the original authority on the matter:
The passions are naturally moved by sensations, and, if love and absti-
nence are present they will not be moved; but in their absence, they will
be moved. Therefore, the irascible needs more remedies than the con-
cupiscible. And therefore love is called “great” (1 Cor 13:13) because it is
the bridle of the irascible; it is this also that that saint Moses, in the trea-
tise On Nature, symbolically named “enemy of serpents [mongoose]” (Lev
11:22).30
Moses is the source of Evagrius’ own teaching—or at least the teaching that
he (in the final florilegium of the Praktikos) claims to have derived from his
teachers concerning the role of agapē in controlling or harnessing the irasci-
ble (θυμικός) portion of the soul. So much has already been stated in Philo, as
the Guillaumonts note in their commentary; but more interesting is the por-
trayal of Moses as now, not just a great prophet, but also a saint and an author
of a treatise on nature. What also that Moses, the holy one, saw in the natural
things he named symbolically a snake-killer (ὀφιομάχην). Evagrius perhaps has
derived his allegorical exegesis of Leviticus 11:22 (LXX) from Philo, where the
text reads ὀφιομάχος for hagab (probably originally a mongoose), and translates
it as “serpent-killer” for locust or ichneumon-fly. Following Philo, then, Evagrius
understands the snake-killer as an insect. It is notable that Evagrius has made
Moses in effect the author of a treatise on the natural world. But how did Moses
come to be like Aristotle? First, he had a disposition that made him a good nat-
ural scientist—praotēs, a quality identical to that ascribed by Christ to himself
in Matt 11:29.
A passage from Letter 56 helps to amplify Evagrius’ views of Moses:
Moses was the gentlest of men (Num 12:3) where LXX reads “And the
man Moses was very gentle, beyond all the men who were existing on
the earth,” and with reason the Holy Spirit has said that he has shown
30 Praktikos 38, in Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus. Sinkewicz com-
pares this kephalaion with Kephalaia Gnostica 3.35, which says “Spiritual knowledge puri-
fies the mind, love heals the irasciple part and abstinence halts the flowing of desire,”
where the irascible part (τὸ θυμικὸν μέρος) appears in Ps 57:5, “Their anger bears the like-
ness of a serpent.” If the serpent is anger, then the ophiomachēs stands for the love that
destroys it.
220 young
his ways to Moses (Ps 102:7). This gentleness, transmit to your brothers,
that they not fall back easily into wrath. For no vice is more effective than
wrath, to make the intellect become demonic, thanks to the troubling of
the irascible part [of the soul]. It is said, in fact, in the Psalm, “their wrath
resembles a serpent (Ps 57:5).” … Thus let none of the brothers resemble
a serpent, and do not approve for them any abstinence excluding gentle-
ness …. Tell me, in fact, why Scripture, when it wishes to make a praise
of Moses, leaves on the side all the miracles that he has done and recalls
only his gentleness?31
Evagrius seems to have had in mind as well Num 12:6–8: “When there are
prophets among you, I the Lord make myself known to them in visions; I speak
to them in dreams. Not so with my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house.
With him I speak face to face—clearly, not in riddles; and he beholds the glory
of the Lord.”
In this passage, Evagrius makes it clear that Moses has become at the same
time the remedy for the serpent who stands for wrath, and the paragon of
all the gentle humans on the earth. Evagrius also joins the contemporary dis-
cussion on the problem of anger as a disruptive force in late ancient society.
According to William Harris, the fourth century saw Christians enter as philoso-
phers into the late-ancient discussion about rage as a social problem. No less
than six thinkers, four of them connected directly or indirectly to Evagrius,
dealt with the topic as a disease to be diagnosed and cured. Basil and Gre-
gory of Nazianzus along with John Chrysostom considered the public aspects
of anger, as had John’s teacher Libanius.32 In ascetic circles, as Richard Layton
has shown, Didymus the Blind, teaching in Alexandria at roughly the same time
as Evagrius, also advocated ἀπάθεια as the cure for anger and after Evagrius, and
taught by him, John Cassian introduced a discussion of anger into his Confer-
ences.33
31 Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus, 604, ll. 12–14.

32 William V. Harris, Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 391–420.
33 Richard Layton, Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria (Urbana: Uni-
versity of Illinois Press, 2003), 116; Columba Stewart, Cassian the Monk (New York: Oxford
University Press), 33–34.
5 Moses as Friend of Christ
If the cure for wrath is gentleness acquired through following the πρακτική,
gentleness—the opposite of wrath and envy—is also the foundation for friend-
ship, and here Moses also becomes an exemplar of the friendship that marks
proximity to Christ. Two of Evagrius’ scholia on Proverbs, 69 and 304, point out
how Moses is Christ’s friend:
Everyone carrying a pledge of the friend of the apostles, Christ, that he

is righteousness and truth, “betrays” his soul to “enemies” who have the
habit of fighting human beings because of their friendship for the Savior.
Spiritual friendship is in fact the knowledge of God in which the holy ones
receive the title of “friends of God.” It is thus that John the Baptist was
a friend of the spouse, just like Moses and the apostles. [Christ] indeed
has said, “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” “Aggravate” by prayers
and supplications “your friend as well to whom you are pledged,” in say-
ing “Guard me, Lord, from the hand of the sinner, deliver me from the
unjust man and my enemies,” because “it is because of you that we are
put to death the whole day and are numbered as sheep for the slaugh-
ter.”
Evagrius here comments on Prov 6:1: “Son, if you carry a pledge of your friend,
you will betray your hand to the enemy.” Appropriately for his general pur-
pose, he understands “the enemy” as demons who fight the friends of Christ
by prompting one of the thoughts that disturb and tempt the monk.
The next mention of Moses comes in Evagrius’ comment on Prov 25:10a:
“Grace and friendship make free; which ones you should guard for yourself,
in order that you not become blamed.” Here Evagrius expands the meaning
of the word “free” by associating it with other scriptural instances to show that
Moses was like Solomon and John the Baptist in being free and a friend of Christ
because he had “the knowledge of Christ”:
Solomon often recalls the friend and friendship. Therefore one does well
now to call attention to that which the word of “friendship” seems to
mean to him. He says in fact that “grace and friendship make free,” just
as the savior in the gospels said to the Jews who were persuaded by him,
“If you remain in my word, you will truly be my students, and the truth
will free you.” And further, Paul wrote “Christ has freed us from the curse
of the law.” Therefore, if “friendship frees,” if “the truth frees,” if the sav-
ior frees, “truth” and “friendship” are Christ. Therefore also all those hav-
222 young
ing the knowledge of Christ are friends of each other. It is thus that the
savior has called his disciples friends, and John was a friend of the bride-
groom, and Moses also and all the holy ones. And it is only in this kind
of friendship that the friends of the same person are also friends of each
other.
304
It is interesting that Evagrius has dispersed his teaching on Moses into dis-
parate treatises, but perhaps Moses is mainly an exemplar for a curriculum that
Evagrius wants to convey to his readers. Moses listened to the wise counsel of
Jethro; he defeated anger; he practiced gentleness, and because he was gen-
tle, he became a friend of Christ. To become a friend of Christ is, in turn, to
be party to the knowledge of God, which throughout the work of Evagrius is
said to depend upon stilling anger, gaining gentleness, and being receptive to
natural knowledge in a state that can lead to contemplation and knowledge.
So Evagrius summarizes this in Thoughts 13, in a passage in which he arranges
scriptural texts attesting the quality in Moses, David and Christ:
If someone has mastered irascibility, he has mastered the demons, but

if someone is a slave to this passion, he is a complete foreigner to the
monastic life and a stranger to the ways of our Saviour, since the Lord
himself is said to teach the gentle his ways (cf. Ps 24:9). Thus, the mind
of anchorites becomes difficult to capture when it flees to the plain of
gentleness. For hardly any of the virtues do the demons fear as they fear
gentleness. The great Moses possessed this virtue, for he was called “gentle
beyond all men” (Num 12:3) and the holy David claimed that it is worthy
of the memory of God, saying, “Remember David and all his gentleness,”
(Ps 131:1); moreover the Saviour himself commanded us to be imitators
of his gentleness, saying, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble
in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matt 11:29).” And if some-
one abstains from food and drink but rouses his irascible part to anger by
means of evil thoughts, he is like a ship sailing the high seas with a demon
for a pilot. So as far as possible, it is necessary to keep watch over this dog
of ours and teach him to destroy only the wolves and not to devour the
sheep, while showing every gentleness to all people.34
34 (Thoughts 13, Sinkiewicz) In Letter 4, to John of Jerusalem, Evagrius had described himself
as one who was such a ship, steered by a demon-pilot.
To move from anger and enmity toward gentleness and friendship was to fol-
low Moses’ example, and Gregory of Nyssa had also described such a passage,
in his On the Inscriptions of the Psalms, making David one who had ascended
from wrath and sexual license toward gentleness. Such was not just a commu-
nal virtue—it was also a prerequisite for seeing the natural world clearly, and
understanding it.
6 Moses as Gnostic Priest
Evagrius did not follow the pattern of his teachers’ interpretation of Moses as
the model for a holy bishop, and that the obvious reason for this was his depar-
ture from the service of bishops when he became a monk. Yet like Clement,
Evagrius regarded the genuine priest as a sage who could teach and guide the
church, and he adds yet another layer of interpretation in his discussion of
the role of Moses as the architect of a priesthood preceding by far the insti-
tution of the Christian priesthood detailed by Gregory of Nazianzus and John
Chrysostom, or the Aaronic priesthood they held to be the type supplanted by
the Christian hierarchy. If Moses was a gentle scientist, for Evagrius he was also
a noetic priest, having provided the pattern for the Temple priesthood as well as
for its spiritual appropriation by monks. And if Evagrius had begun On Prayer
with the observation that the elements of the incense-offering are actually the
cardinal virtues, he also portrayed Moses as the prototype of priestly approach
to the noetic altar. To recall the passage cited above:
4. If Moses, when he tried to approach the earthly burning bush, was held
back until he removed the sandals from his feet (Exod 3:5), how can you,
who wish to see and commune with the one who is beyond all represen-
tation and sense perception, not free yourself from every mental repre-
sentation tied to the passions?
Thus Evagrius was proposing that Moses—the teacher of the outward law of
the πρακτική—was also the guide to its penultimate goal, namely the knowl-
edge of the logoi, the creative principles, of the cosmos. As we have seen, Eva-
grius described Moses’ gnostic leadership in at least two ways. The first way
he scattered in various chapters of the Kephalaia Gnostika, where he decodes
the meaning of the garments of the high priest, as recorded by Moses. Eigh-
teen kephalaia state, for instance, the meaning of the robe, the ephod, and
the undergarment of the high priest, transposing them into moral qualities.
Kephalaion 5.84 proposes that “the intelligible temple” described by Moses “is
224 young
the pure mind, which now has in it ‘God’s wisdom filled with rich variety (Eph
3:10).’” At the same time it is “the one who is a visionary of the holy unity; and
the altar of God is the contemplation of the Holy Trinity.”
Moses in the Kephalaia Gnōstika, then, was the author of both the path to,
and the state of, contemplation. Yet another text, this one preserved in Greek,
connects Moses with the problem of the mental representations (νοὴματα) “of
this age” that arise in the human being and require watchful care, “like sheep
with a good shepherd (John 10:1–18).” Thoughts 17 elaborately constructs an
equivalence between Jesus, Jacob, David, and, finally, Moses. If the shepherd
becomes weary after a long night of guarding these representations as the
wolves of the (demon-agitated) passions encircle them, first David, and finally
Moses, have already pointed toward a respite:
If as a result of weariness a certain ἀκηδία comes over us, let us take refuge
for a while upon the rock of knowledge, let us take our harp and strike the
notes of knowledge by means of the virtues. Then, let us once again graze
our sheep at the foot of Mount Sinai, that the God of our Fathers may call
to us too from out of the bush (cf. Exod 3:1–6) and grant us to know the
reasons of “the signs and wonders” (cf. Exod 7:9; 11:9–10).
It may look as if Evagrius has made Moses into primarily a type, of which Christ,
or Christian teaching, is the fulfillment. Yet in several sentences of the Kepha-
laia Gnōstika, an esoteric work meant for reading by the gnōstikoi, Evagrius
makes it clear that Moses was aware of the first creation of the world and the
original minds before they fell and became embodied humans with souls. Two
kephalaia will show this:
Among the beings, some have come into being before the judgment [of
fallen ones], and others after the judgment. And on the subject of the first,
no one has made [any knowledge] known, but on the subject of the sec-
ond, he who was on Horeb (Exod 3:1) has made such an account.35
For Evagrius, the term “judgment” refers to the distribution of fallen minds in
bodies that are angelic, human or demonic. He does not explicitly tell his read-
ers how Moses attained his knowledge of the judgment and the second creation
that resulted from it, but the prophet’s ability in contemplation of nature and of
the divinity would have made him able to write down what he knew, in obscure
35 Kephalaia Gnōstika 2.64 (p. 87).

language, to let other gnōstikoi become aware of the origin of the world; as Eva-
grius writes in Kephalaia Gnōstika 6.45,
Not one of the worlds has been greater than the first world; for one says
that that one has been made from the first principle; and that in it will be
accomplished all the worlds, an athlete and Gnōstikos has handed down
to us.36
Just as Moses’ instruction was both plain and symbolic, it is for the monastic
Gnōstikos to manifest the inner knowledge of the priest, and to understand
that Moses’ instructions were not meant to specify only visible ceremonials,
but to guide the Gnōstikos in acquiring the dispositions and knowledge that
would furnish the means of ascent, through the acquisition of virtue, natural
knowledge, friendship with God and finally, knowledge and union. Evagrius’
understanding of Moses shows that he is not primarily a model for episcopal
leadership, but for the establishment of rules of life, the study of nature, and
the gnostic instruction that still, for Evagrius, expressed the deepest purpose of
Christianismos.37
36 See the discussion in Vlad Niculescu, “Coping With the Grief of Ignorance,” 12.
37 See Praktikos 1: “Christianity (Christianismos) is the teaching of Christ our Savior. It is
composed of the practical, the natural and the theological.” See Antoine and Claire Guil-
laumont, Evagre le Pontique: Traité pratique, ou Le Moine, 2 vols., SC 17–171 (Paris: Cerf, 1971),
2.498–499.
chapter 12
Holy Sound: Preaching as Divine Song in Late

Antique Syriac Tradition
Late antique Syriac Christianity is known for the extraordinary flourishing of

its liturgical poetry. Over the course of this era (roughly 4th–7th cent. CE),
poetry came to characterize every aspect of Syriac liturgy: its hymns, prayers,
supplications, and indeed, its preaching. Syriac scholars have long contrasted
the two basic categories of Syriac poetry that provided the types and sub-
genres for these different purposes: the madrasha (pl. madrashe) and memra
(pl. memre). Madrashe were characterized by a great variety of meters and
melodies; manuscripts often include the melody titles, although the music
from this period is unknown to us. These were arranged in strophes sung by
chanters and female and male choirs, with refrains contributed by the con-
gregation. By contrast, memre took the form of isosyllabic couplets, simply
metered according to several preferred patterns: 5 + 5, 7 + 7, or 12 + 12. Memre are
generally referred to (by scholars and, as will be indicated below, in primary
sources) as verse homilies or metrical sermons, performed by a male liturgi-
cal agent, usually a priest or bishop. Scholars have suggested that memre were
recited rather than sung. Perhaps, when performed liturgically, recitation was
heightened by intonation or the form of chanting known as cantillation. Both
madrashe and memre during late antiquity provided strikingly eloquent vehi-
cles for religious pedagogy. For both, content focused on biblical story telling
and exegesis, basic doctrinal instruction, and guidance for Christian life.1
However, it is a further feature of late antique Syriac liturgies that the con-
trasts between these two broad poetic forms seem to have diminished, or at
least became elided, in the context of liturgical performance. Madrashe, with
their stanzaic arrangements, yet sometimes did not include refrains. Memre,
intoned in cadenced couplets, sometimes did, implying congregational partic-
ipation during homiletic instruction. After the dazzling splendor of Ephrem
the Syrian’s fourth-century hymnography, madrashe grew simpler in metered
1 For an important introduction, see Sebastian P. Brock, “Poetry and Hymnography (3): Syriac,”
in Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian
Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 657–671.

preaching as divine song in late antique syriac tradition 227
strophes and more straightforward in content. Memre assumed increasing pop-

ularity as a form of liturgical teaching, and flowered especially in the fifth and
sixth centuries with the lyrical skill of poets such as Jacob of Sarug and Narsai of
Nisibis. A major shift in liturgical usage, from contrast between the two genre
to greater commonality in performative aspects, is clear, even if the reasons
are not evident.2 What continued to be indisputable, however, was a profound
devotion of Syriac Christians during late antiquity to sung poetry as the primary
vehicle for worship, devotional piety, and religious instruction.
Late antique Syriac sources raise the issue of shared performative expres-
sion for madrashe and memre by the occasional use of shared imagery or
shared description in reference to both. This shared imagery might be broadly
described as twofold: first, references to both hymns and sermons as melodi-
cally sung; and second, characterizations of both as potent, effective weapons
of pedagogy. This imagery attributed musicality to preaching, and also attri-
buted deep affect and effective impact for the singing of hymns as for melodic
preaching. Such imagery appeared in hagiography exalting the great poet
preachers of late antiquity: for example, the figures of Ephrem the Syrian
(d. 373), Rabbula of Edessa (d. 435), Narsai of Nisibis (d. 502), and Jacob of Sarug
(d. 521). It occurs somewhat differently also in the ostensibly personal invoca-
tional prayers that introduce, and occasionally punctuate the content of, Jacob
of Sarug’s memre. My essay will examine this shared imagery about madrashe
and memre to address two principal questions: What did the notion of music
add to the understanding of preaching? What aspects of late antique Syriac
liturgy are illumined by this imagery and its associations?
1 Singing as Weaponry
There is a well-known tradition that Ephrem the Syrian began to compose

his madrashe as a means to fight heresy. The story was indelibly incised into
hagiographical memory by both Greek and Syriac authors. Over the course of
the fifth and sixth centuries, Sozomen, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Jacob of Sarug,
and the anonymous author of the Syriac Life of Ephrem all presented such
an account.3 In this hagiographical trope, Ephrem sought to fight heresy by
2 See now the magisterial study of Sidney H. Griffith, “The Poetics of Scriptural Reasoning: Syr-
iac Memre at Work,” in Jeffrey Wickes, Kristian S. Heal, and Markus Vinzent, eds., Literature,
Rhetoric, and Exegesis in Syriac Verse, Studia Patristica 78.4 (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 5–23.
3 For the hagiographical record on Ephrem, see Sebastian P. Brock, “St. Ephrem in the Eyes
of Later Syriac Liturgical Tradition,” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 2. 1 (1999 [2010]): 5–
228 harvey
presenting truth in a hymnographic form that was beautiful, penetrating, and

pleasing to ear and memory alike. For example, from the Life of Ephrem: “When
[Ephrem] saw how false teaching was drawn to these melodies [of the heretics],
he then took arrangements of melodies (qale) and songs (qinyatha) and mixed
[true doctrine] [lit: fear of God] in them and offered to hearers an antidote at
once agreeable and wholesome.”4
To the image of mixing true words with pleasing melodies, Syriac hagiogra-
phers added martial imagery for the effect of Ephrem’s hymns. The anonymous
Life of Ephrem described Ephrem’s heated fervor as he composed his madrashe,
and described the Daughters of the Covenant whom Ephrem organized into
choirs to sing his hymns as the troops he prepared for battle.5 In Jacob of Sarug’s
memra on Ephrem, this martial imagery is specifically sharpened to that of
archery:
This man [Ephrem]’s mouth was a bow, and his words were arrows;
He forged songs like spearheads for the weapon which he fashioned.
This man hurled wonderful melodies against the evil;
With his instruction, he eliminated stumbling blocks which had multi-
plied.
… When heresies, like wild animals, were encircling him;
whenever he shot his swift arrows he scattered them.6
The same imagery reappeared in the seventh century, in the East Syriac author
Barhadbeshabba’s account of why Narsai of Nisibis turned to memre for
preaching truth. Where the hagiographical accounts of Ephrem described
madrashe as vehicles for contesting heresy and instructing truth, in Barhadbe-
25; Bernard Outtier, “Saint Éphrem d’après ses biographies et ses œuvres,” Parole de l’ Orient
4.1–2 (1973): 11–33; Joseph P. Amar, The Syriac “Vita” Tradition of Ephrem the Syrian, CSCO 629–
630/Scr. Syr. 242–243 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011). For Ephrem’s own dismayed testimony on the
hymns of Bardaisan, see, e.g., his Hymns on Heresy, 53.6, ed. and trans. Edmund Beck, Des
heiligen Ephraem des Syrers hymnen contra haereses, CSCO 169–170/Scr. Syr. 76–77 (Louvain:
Durbecq, 1955).
4 Anon., Life of Ephrem, ch. 31 (P), ed. and trans. in Joseph P. Amar, The Syriac “Vita” Tradition of
Ephrem the Syrian, CSCO 629/Scr. Syr. 242 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011) 73 (Syr.) and CSCO 630/Scr.
Syr. 243 (Leuven: Peeters, 2011) 78 (Eng.).
5 Anon., Life of Ephrem, ch. 31, ed. and trans. in Amar, The Syriac “Vita” Tradition, CSCO 629/Scr.
Syr. 242, at pp. 71–73 (Syr.) and CSCO 630/Scr. Syr. 243, at 77–80 (Eng.). Cf. Ps. 10 (11): 2 and
Ps. 63 (64): 34.
6 Jacob of Sarug, “Homily on Mar Ephrem,” ed. and trans. Joseph P. Amar in A Metrical Homily
on Holy Mar Ephrem by Mar Jacob of Sarug, PO 47.1 (1995) here vv. 153–154, pp. 64–65; v. 182,
pp. 70–71.
shabba’s presentation, it was memre that were the tool of choice. In this
instance, the dangers of ‘heresy’ were roused by the powerful and melodic
preaching of the miaphysite Jacob of Sarug, to which the dyophysite Narsai
responded in kind.
[Jacob of Sarug,] eloquent for evil and joined closely to heresy, began to
compose his heresy and error hypocritically by the way of the memre,
which he composed, since through the pleasant composition of entic-
ing sounds he drew the bulk of the people from the glorious one. What
then did [Narsai] the elect of God do? … he set down the true opinion of
orthodoxy in the manner of memre, filled upon sweet tones (qinyatha).
He combined the meaning of the scriptures according to the opinion of
the holy fathers in pleasant antiphons (hphakatha) in the likeness of the
blessed David [in the Psalms].7
As Sidney Griffith has pointed out, the irony here is great. Not only did Jacob
and Narsai as historical persons contest each other’s theological loyalties
through the same poetic form—the memra—but they did so, furthermore, in
the same isosyllabic meter of 12+12.8 But what I wish to stress is the signifi-
cant elision of preaching and song, for Barhadbeshabba has here presented the
genre of memre in terms normally encountered for madrashe. Indeed, the pas-
sage is a virtual borrowing from the anonymous Syriac Life of Ephrem, ch. 31
and even—again, ironically—from Jacob of Sarug’s memra on the Holy Mar
Ephrem.9
I suggest that this conflation, or elision, of madrashe and memre meant
something purposeful to late antique Syriac writers. For them, teaching,
preaching, and song were deeply interwoven. Consider the traditions asso-
ciated with the fifth century bishop Rabbula of Edessa, for whom neither
madrashe nor memre are attested.10 According to his anonymous hagiographer,
7 Barhadbeshabba, Ecclesiastical History, ch. 31 (“Life of Narsai”), trans. Adam H. Becker,

Sources for the Study of the School of Nisibis, TTH 50 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,
2008), 69. See Becker’s comment, ibid., n. 160, noting the application of hymnographic
terms to the genre of the memre.
8 Griffith, “Poetics of Scriptural Reasoning.”
9 Life of Ephrem, Ch. 31; Jacob of Sarug, “Homily on Mar Ephrem,” vv. 114–125, 151–154, 169–
184.
10 I follow the translation in Robert Doran, Stewards of the Poor: The Man of God, Rabbula, and
Hiba in Fifth-Century Edessa (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2006). The Life of Rab-
bula, in addition to the collected corpus of works preserved under Rabbula’s name, both
authentic and attributed, are now conveniently available in Syriac edition with English
230 harvey
Rabbula was converted to Christianity when he heard and saw wondrous heal-
ings performed by Christian saints. But the miracle on his own person was of a
different sort. For,
[Rabbula] was especially amazed at the marvel God worked in his very
own person, for the Lord opened his lips and Rabbula offered a new
song (teshbuhtha hadtha) (Ps 40:3, 51:15; Rev 5:9), a song to God, to the
Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit …. Then Rabbula went to
[the bishop] Acacius and revealed to him how, as he stood and prayed,
God made a song (teshbuhtha) spring forth in his mouth.11
Now, no liturgical poetry is found in Rabbula’s authentic extant corpus, nor

mentioned in his long and rich hagiography. Yet, beyond the hagiographical
record, a large quantity of liturgical poetry was attributed to Rabbula, in the
form of poetic prayers and supplications that continue to adorn Syriac Ortho-
dox liturgical books to the present day.12 It is as if a bishop whose preaching
was of such profound effect could not be remembered without sung poetry as
part of the tradition.
The Life of Rabbula nonetheless placed great stress on Rabbula’s voice. By
the power of his voice, according to the hagiography, Rabbula reformed the
church infrastructure, brought justice to the city, and admonished, guided,
instructed, and inspired the faithful.13 In the midst of an extended celebration
of Rabbula’s preaching on these various matters, the hagiographer turned to the
matter of fighting heresy, and Edessa’s particular battles with religious diver-
sity. Beginning with followers of “the accursed Bardaisan,” whose “artifice” and
“sweetness of melodies (qinyatha)” had long captured the city, Rabbula “with
a gentle and loving voice (qala)” drew the stragglers back to God’s truth.14 Jews
translation in Robert R. Phenix, Jr. and Cornelia B. Horn, eds., The Rabbula Corpus (Atlanta:
Society of Biblical Literature Press, 2017).
11 Doran, Stewards of the Poor, 69/Phenix and Horn, Rabbula Corpus, sec. 6–7, 14–15.
12 The large body of so-called “Supplications of Rabbula” are helpfully collected in Phenix
and Horn, Rabbula Corpus, 286–409, and the Appendix, 411–417. For the manuscript wit-
ness, see Ignatius Aphrem I Barsoum, The Scattered Pearls: A History of Syriac Literature
and Sciences, 2nd rev. ed. by Matti Moosa (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2003), 94.
13 See the Life of Rabbula, Doran, Stewards of the Poor, 81–97/Phenix and Horn, Rabbula Cor-
pus, sec. 22–48, 36–71. The capacity of liturgical poetry for ethical formation is a constant
theme and practice in the madrashe and memre of Ephrem the Syrian and Jacob of Sarug,
both. See Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Liturgy and Ethics in Ancient Syriac Christianity: Two
Paradigms,” Studies in Christian Ethics 26.3 (2013): 300–316.
14 Doran, Stewards of the Poor, 91–92/Phenix and Horn, Rabbula Corpus, 58–61, sec. 40–41.
and other heretics soon followed: Arians, Marcionites, Manichees, and more.
To each and all, Rabbula turned the power of his voice and the weapon of his
words:
Thus our blessed father [Rabbula] was stretching out and shooting these
spiritual arrows from the bow of his faith by the vigorous string of his
true speech. Although they passed through the ears of the people harm-
lessly and encouraged [them], yet they struck the heart of any opponent
to cause him pain and to move him to regret.15
Just so did Rabbula then endeavor to preach in Constantinople itself, refuting

Nestorius’s nefarious teachings in person: “with a lofty unashamed voice (qala),
Rabbula proclaimed straightforwardly the word of truth.”16
While the Life of Rabbula does not refer to Rabbula’s sermons as memre, the
important imagery of powerful voice (remembering that qala might also mean
“melody”) and “new song,” the martial resonances for combatting heresy, and
the subsequent attribution of liturgical poetry to his name, all tie Rabbula’s
memory to the complex of rhetorical imagery we have noted for Ephrem, Nar-
sai, and Jacob of Sarug. What mattered to Syriac authors about the elision of
song and preaching, of hymn and sermon, of madrasha and memra?
2 Combat Therapies
On the one hand, these accounts of Ephrem, Rabbula, Jacob of Sarug and Nar-
sai, drew upon a broader religious trope that affirmed sacred song as thera-
peutic: the mixing of true words with sweet melodies could be an effective
and powerful tool for the pursuit of virtue. This rhetorical trope appears not
only in traditions about Ephrem and other Syriac poets, but also, for example,
in late antique Greek commentaries on the Psalms. Basil of Caesarea, for one,
attributed this strategy to the Holy Spirit’s inspiration for the biblical Psalms:
For when the Holy Spirit saw that mankind was ill-inclined toward virtue
and that we were heedless of the righteous life because of our inclination
to pleasure, what did he do? He blended the delight of melody with doc-
trine in order that through the pleasantness and softness of the sound we
15 Doran, Stewards of the Poor, 97/Phenix and Horn, Rabbula Corpus, 66–69, sec. 45–46.
Again, cf. Ps 10 (11):2 and Ps 63 (64):34.
16 Doran, Stewards of the Poor, 97/Phenix and Horn, Rabbula Corpus, 68–69.
232 harvey
might unawares receive what was useful in the words, according to the
practice of wise physicians, who, when they give the more bitter draughts
to the sick, often smear the rim of the cup with honey.17
In similar vein, John Chrysostom declared: “When God saw that most men were
slothful … he blended melody with prophecy in order that, delighted by the
modulation of the chant, all might raise sacred hymns to him with great eager-
ness.”18 The notion of music as therapy resonated with the therapeutic agenda
of Hellenistic philosophy broadly speaking, where different therapies, mixed
and mingled, some gentle, some harsh, were prescribed for the disciplining of
the passions, the cultivation of virtues, and the ethical formation of charac-
ter.19 Moreover, it was these ideas that rendered music fundamental to Greek
traditions of paideia: the appreciation that music was attractive and effective
pedagogically, enabling memorization as well as ethical discipline.20 While
this was an ancient tradition, several significant works theorizing the thera-
peutic capacity of music for ethical formation appeared during roughly the
same era as the texts here discussed. Porphyry’s Life of Iamblichus, Iamblichus’
The Pythagorean Way of Life, and Aristides Quintilianus’ de musica, all devoted
extensive discussion to these themes.21 A shared rhetoric about music, peda-
gogy, and ethical formation appears in these texts as in our Syriac hagiographies
of preachers and poet theologians.
Were Syriac hagiographers, or their Greek counterparts, simply drawing on
a convenient philosophical trope when they wished to emphasize the effi-
cacy of religious truth presented in the form of poetry, melodically performed?
Certainly this was one available rhetorical strategy for their encomiastic agen-
17 Basil of Caesarea, “On Psalm 1,” sec. 1, trans. in Oliver Strunk and Leo Treitler, and James
McKinnon, eds., Source Readings in Music History. The Early Christian Period and the Latin
Middle Ages, rev. ed., vol. 2 (New York: Norton, 1998), 11.
18 John Chrysostom, “Exposition of Psalm 41,” trans. Strunk, Treitler, and McKinnon, The
Early Christian Period and the Latin Middle Ages, 13.
19 For example, Martha Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Phi-
losophy, rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
20 The different traditions that contributed to early Christian music, of which Greek was a
prominent one but not the only, are helpfully laid out in John Arthur Smith, “Music,” in
Philip Esler, ed. The Early Christian World, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2017), 745–761.
21 Antonietta Provenza, “Correcting Ethos and Purifying the Body. Musical Therapy in Iam-
blichus’De vita pythagorica,” GRMS 3 (2015): 94–115; Andreas Kramatz, “Is the Idea of ‘Musi-
cal Emotion’ Present in Classical Antiquity?,” GRMS 5 (2017): 1–17. As these studies note,
the notion of music as therapy has important foundations in Plato: Elizabeth Lucia Lyon,
“Ethical Aspects of Listening in Plato’s Timaeus: Pleasure and Delight in 80b5–8,” GRMS 4
(2016): 253–272.
das, to praise the saint (or the Trinity!) for exceptionally effective teaching,
whether through sermons or hymns. What the Syriac texts add to the philo-
sophical trope, however, is the further imagery of weaponry, combat, and war-
fare. This further agonistic resonance fully accords with the prevailing religious
atmosphere in late antiquity, a time of heated religious competition and con-
testation, in which polemics across and within religions colored all modes of
discourse. The polemical use of hymnography was one of the general charac-
teristics of late antique Christian hymns.22 What we see in the Syriac rhetoric
here is a trenchant self-awareness of this practice, emphasizing its function-
ality. As the hagiographies emphasized, songs worked well pedagogically both
for the inculcation of truth and for the fighting of falsehood.
To be sure, the liturgical poetry of late antiquity needed to guide towards
ethical formation—as in philosophical tradition—and also to instruct in right
teaching or truth over and against heresy. Such twofold need placed a pre-
mium on the musical aspects of poetry, and apparently for practical reasons.
The saintly liturgical figures of Ephrem, Rabbula, Narsai, or Jacob of Sarug
were glorified for their artistry as craftsmen of language. But the point of their
celebration—the reason the power of their words mattered—was their effi-
cacy as teachers of “orthodoxy.” Their words, in sermons or hymns, chanted or
sung, were effective conveyors of truth. And words offered in liturgical context
required impact in different directions. They needed to be powerful in their
affect and effect upon the congregation, to guide them rightly. But they needed
also to be compelling in their offering towards the divine, as vehicles of fitting
praise and worship, supplication, repentance, and devotion. Ordinary speech
would not do for such tasks.
Late antique Syriac theologians built a profound tradition of poetry as the
most fitting form of discourse for the pursuit and expression of theology. This
understanding of the work of the “poet theologian” is one that Syriac schol-
ars have long appreciated.23 What I wish to underscore here is that it was not
simply poetry as metered, crafted speech, but musical poetry—poetry that was
22 For the general observation, see Smith, “Music,” 758. Bardaisan, Mani, Arius, and the
Donatists were frequently attested in late antique authors Syriac, Greek, and Latin for
the popularity of their hymns. For an example, see Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Patristic
Worlds,” Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony et al., eds., Patristic Studies in the Twenty-first Century:
Proceedings of an International Conference to Mark the 50th Anniversary of the Interna-
tional Association of Patristic Studies (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 25–53.
23 Classic examples would be Sebastian P. Brock, The Luminous Eye: The Spiritual World Vision
of Saint Ephrem (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1992); Sidney H. Griffith, “Faith
Adoring the Mystery”: Reading the Bible with St. Ephraem the Syrian (Milwaukee, WI: Mar-
quette University Press, 1997).
234 harvey
heard as, and experienced as, musically melodic—that Syriac writers exalted in
these hagiographical texts as also in their liturgical traditions. Syriac hagiogra-
phers employed the discourse of musical therapy and weaponry as a rhetoric to
acknowledge the great saints of their theological and liturgical history. At the
same time, they used it to glorify the formation of Syriac liturgy and its poetic
forms as a technical, literary process that happened in historical reality.
3 Pedagogical Singing
Our Syriac hagiographers were not, perhaps, entirely distant from the real work
of the saints they celebrated. For singing was a basic part of Syriac liturgical
training and religious instruction starting at least from the time of Ephrem,
just as singing was also the primary mode of liturgical celebration for the gath-
ered church community. The vast body of Ephrem the Syrian’s extant corpus,
for example, shows him to have been a devoted teacher for those who served
the church in different capacities.24 Ephrem wrote biblical commentaries and
polemical prose treatises that served as instructional guides for long centuries
after his own death.25 But the bulk of Ephrem’s surviving corpus is poetry,
both madrashe and memre, and some were intended for his classroom rather
than liturgical performance.26 The sung performance of this poetry was part of
its pedagogical presentation. Strophes and isosyllabic couplets were effective
vehicles for the teacher; responses and recitation were effective strategies for
the student. In Ephrem’s extant corpus, sung poetry is present as both a method
of education for those who would be liturgical leaders and agents, and also, in
the form of liturgical hymns, a means to disseminate that education to the con-
gregation in a public liturgical context.27
24 Jeffrey Wickes, “Between Liturgy and School: Reassessing the Performative Context of
Ephrem’s Madrāšê,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 26.1 (2018): 25–51.
25 E.g., Christian Lange, The Portrayal of Christ in the Syriac Commentary on the Diatessaron,
CSCO 616/Sub. 118 (Leuven: Peeters, 2005).
26 Wickes, “Between Liturgy and School.” See also Griffith, “Poetics of Scriptural Reasoning”;
idem, “Faith Adoring the Mystery.”
27 Clearly intended for liturgical use, for example, were Ephrem’s Hymns on Nativity and
Hymns on the Resurrection. These were sung during the vigil service prior to the liturgy
of the feast, and the verses occasionally refer to the service and the occasion. By con-
trast, Ephrem’s Hymns on Faith appear to indicate a non-liturgical, study-oriented setting:
Wickes, “Between Liturgy and School”; and idem, St. Ephrem the Syrian, The Hymns on
Faith, Fathers of the Church, 130 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2015).
Our evidence on this point is especially full in the case of the (East Syriac)
School of Nisibis.28 Statutes of the School identify liturgical music as a core part
of the curriculum throughout a student’s tenure, but also indicate that musical
instruction was the standard practice at every level. As was apparently the case
for Ephrem’s students, singing here served as a vehicle for teaching, a mode of
academic study, and a skill to be mastered for liturgical performance. Lessons
were recited and sung with the students in formation as a choir: knowledge
was conveyed in dialogic fashion through the singing or recitation of verses
and responses. Faculty associated with the School over different centuries pro-
duced important scholarly works on the liturgy, including its different musical
expressions.29 It was here that Narsai offered his memre, masterpieces of lyri-
cal homiletic teaching performed in the classroom no less than in liturgical
events. Teaching and learning were a musical exchange at the School of Nis-
ibis, a methodology attested across the centuries of evidence for the School.
Learning with music, students learned the music of liturgy in addition to mas-
tering the different services, their rubrics and correct celebration. Music was
also the medium for learning correct (“orthodox”) biblical interpretation and
doctrinal instruction that would be imparted to congregations through various
forms of sung liturgical poetry, madrashe and memre.
In the classroom context of Ephrem’s school or the School of Nisibis, we see
both memre and madrashe employed for pedagogical purposes. Hence we see
the functionality of music: an effective vehicle for teaching and learning theo-
logical ideas, biblical stories and exegesis, moral formation, and the specialized
knowledge of the liturgical agent, whether for members of the covenant, dea-
cons, deaconesses, clergy, or other office. Much of this functionality also carried
over to liturgical celebration properly speaking. Liturgical poetry of all forms
was an effective tool for instructing the congregation, and also for the effec-
tive offering of worship, for the contributions of all participants, clerical or
lay.
How these different needs, functions, and tools found voice in the Syriac
memre and madrashe of liturgy is what the hagiographical rhetoric of musical
preaching sought to convey. That is, the imagery of hagiography engaged the
28 Adam H. Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis and the
Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); idem, Sources for the Study of the School of Nisibis; Arthur
Vööbus, The Statutes of the School of Nisibis. Papers of the Estonian School of Theology
in Exile, 12 (Stockholm: ETSE, 1961). Becker’s groundbreaking work is now significantly
supplemented by Ute Possekel, “Selbstverständnis und Bildungsauftrag der Schule von
Nisibis,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 19.1 (2015): 104–136.
29 Becker, Fear of God, 89–94.
236 harvey
pedagogical use of sung poetry as a liturgical medium. But to grasp the deeper
significance of this imagery as it represented the work of the late antique Syr-
iac preacher, we must turn to the invocational prayers that adorn the memre of
Jacob of Sarug.
4 Jacob of Sarug on the Preacher’s Song
One of the characteristics of Jacob’s extensive corpus of memre is the frequent

presence of invocational prayers.30 Such prayers often filled the opening cou-
plets of his memre, sometimes for a page or even several pages. They offered
praise and worship to God while also invoking divine presence and beseech-
ing help for the task at hand: that is, the preaching of a memra on a given
topic. Such prayers sometimes punctuated the body of a memra, when Jacob
approached a particularly difficult matter and prayed for assistance to address
it adequately.31 Apparently distinctive to Jacob’s memre, these prayers provide
some of his finest poetry. They also served to define all elements of Jacob’s
preaching as a liturgical event: the nature of the preacher’s office, the task of
preaching, God as source for the truth to be preached and God as subject of the
preaching, the memra as a voiced teaching, and the congregation as recipients
of the memra.32 It was here, in these prayers, that Jacob provided reflection on
what he thought his task was and should be.
A notable feature of these prayers is Jacob’s vocabulary. In these invoca-
tional verses, Jacob spoke of preaching, offering praise, worship, and teach-
ing. Yet he frequently employed vocabulary that denoted singing, song, hymns,
psalms, and loud or exalted voice (should qala be translated as “voice” or
“melody”?). For example, consider the opening passage of Jacob’s homily on
Simon Peter:
30 Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “The Poet’s Prayer: Invocational Prayers in the Mêmrê of Jacob of
Sarug,” in Jeffrey Wickes, Kristian S. Heal, and Markus Vinzent, eds., Literature, Rhetoric,
and Exegesis in Syriac Verse, Studia Patristica 78.4 (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 51–60; Andrew
Hilkens, “‘Beautiful Little Gems in Their Own Right’: Seventeenth-century Armenian Col-
lections of Prayers of Jacob of Serugh,” (forthcoming).
31 For example, to describe the moment when Jephthah slew his own daughter, Jacob of
Sarug, “Homily on Jephthah’s Daughter,” vv. 422–460, trans. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and
Ophir Münz Manor, MHMJS, 16 (Picscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), 52–57.
32 As analyzed in Harvey, “Poet’s Prayer.” See now also Robert Kitchen, “ ‘I, Memra: This
is the Story Talking.’ Personification of Literary Genre in Jacob of Sarug,” (forthcom-
ing).
[O Christ,] In all my homilies (memre) I call to you, True Son!

May all my words be given in you as praise (shubha) to your Father.
May a voice of confession (qal tawditha) ascend to you in psalms (ba-
zmiratha),
As I recite a homily in praise (memra d-shubhak) of you among your
congregations.
…
O Son, who was pleased to be a sacrifice for sinners,
May my mouth sing (nezmar) to you sincere praise (shubha) with a loud
voice/melody (b-qala rama).
Your word is higher than the eloquent.
May praise (shubha) be roused within me, that it may produce my
hymns (qalai) to your glory (ʿal teshbuhtha).
…
… unless faith sings (His praise) (zmartheh)
With simple voices/melodies (b-qale pshite), there is no mouth to repeat
his story.33
Occasionally, Jacob prayed to become God’s harp or flute; he prayed for his
voice to sing as a musical instrument. Here, from his first homily on the Nativity:
I am giving the harp of my words to You [O Lord] and let me borrow

Your finger;
And in Your hymns (b-qinyathak) let the sound/melody (qala) whisper
to Your glory (teshbuhthak).
…
I am the flute, when Your word is breath and Your story is the voice/
melody (qala).
Please take control of it, and by Your means may we sing to You using
what is Your own.34
Ezmar, zmirtha/zmiratha, qale, shubha/teshbuhtha—these are the lexical

terms that recur through these prayers, as Jacob mustered the strength to
preach. They are interspersed with phrases such as “with loud voice” or “with
33 Jacob of Sarug, “Homily on Simon Peter,” vv. 1–4, 15–18, 59–60, trans. Adam Carter McCol-
lum, MHMJS, 26 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009), 8–11, 14–15.
34 Jacob of Sarug, “Homily 1, On the Nativity of our Redeemer According to the Flesh,” ll. 57–
62, trans. Thomas Kollamparampil, Jacob of Sarug’s Homilies on the Nativity, MHMJS, 23
(Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), 16.
238 harvey
exalted voice” or “raising the voice” (all using qala: again, voice or melody?) or
terms denoting speech, words, or speaking (meltha/mlal, ʾmar) and with the
term memra itself. Was this a confusion of terminology, or deliberate elision?
Here, in its most exalted form, is the elision of word and melody as expressed
in the introductory passage from Jacob’s Homily on Ezekiel:
Exalted One, seated on the unsearchable chariot:

give me Your word, that on earth I may proclaim Your infinity.
Hidden One, exalted above the heavenly beings who bear You aloft,
grant that I may sing (eʾzmar) to You here in the regions below which
you have redeemed.
Essence alone with knowledge of itself, how it exists,
speak distinctly in me that I may speak of You.
O! You, served by the legions of flame,
let my tongue serve You with the beauty of its singing (lit: with its beau-
tiful songs, ba-zmiratheh shaphiratha).
Awesome One, by whom the sun is dazzled if it gazes upon You,
let my intellect gaze on You and be greatly moved to Your praise (tesh-
buhthak).
Hidden One, who are far from the assemblies of the sons of light,
reveal Your mysteries to me, that with its song (ba-zmiratheh) my
tongue may reveal You.
…
Lord most high, my mouth is insufficient for Your praise (teshbuhthak):
make a new mouth for me that it may proclaim Your songs (la-
zmirathak).35
Clearly in Jacob’s view, singing was the appropriate mode of articulation for
speech offered to the divine, and the appropriate mode of expression for speech
about the divine. As we have seen, singing was also a fundamental pedagogi-
cal tool by which to instruct the faithful, and an effective and powerful tool for
battling heresy or falsehood. How fitting that sung words should be used by
a preacher to address his Lord and to instruct his people; how fitting that the
teaching of truth should be a ministry of song.
For this appears to have been Jacob’s understanding of the work of preach-
ing: to instruct his congregation with words that would reveal and articulate
35 Jacob of Sarug, “Homily on the Chariot that Prophet Ezekiel Saw,” vv. 1–12, 27–28, trans.
Alexander Golitzin, MHMJS, 14 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2016), 16–19.
true knowledge of God, in terms that would effectively impact their lives.36
What words, as Jacob asks time and again, could possibly fulfill such work? They
could not be the words of normal speech. Could meter and melody enhance the
capacity of language, to exceed its ordinary limits? Could music adorn language
with beauty appropriate for speech about the divine?
Jacob’s prayers express certainty that no human speech could rise to the
task. Even poetry was not sufficient, even song, unless its power and force were
divinely provided. Hence Jacob prayed for God to provide his words. He did not
think himself to be a prophet: he did not ask God’s voice to replace his own.
Rather, he prayed for God to provide his voice sufficiently. Sung words, melodic
verses, musical sound: in the poetry of his memre, Jacob sought to perform
his ministry. Like Ephrem and bishop Rabbula before him, like his adversar-
ial contemporary Narsai, Jacob sought to perform a ministry of preaching—of
teaching—that would reveal the wonders of divine presence and action, the
teaching of truth over falsehood, and the effective cultivation of virtue towards
a fitting life of devotion.
This essay began with a consideration of the rhetorical imagery used in
hagiography about the great poet theologians of Syriac tradition. With the invo-
cational prayers of Jacob of Sarug, we glimpse something of the work of those
theologians on the ground. We do not know the melodies or forms of chant or
cantillation employed for the Syriac madrashe and memre that were performed
in late antiquity. What we do know is the testimony of those who remem-
bered their greatest poet theologians to be saints who employed a musical
ministry of teaching. Moreover, we have the testimony by prayer of one of their
most effective exemplars. These hagiographical and invocational testimonies
present Syriac liturgical poetry in its varied forms as an offering of song, a musi-
cal expression of teaching and worship. We might well understand its memory
to be fittingly preserved in the music and melodies that have characterized and
adorned the Syriac churches ever since, and into our own time.
Acknowledgments
This essay is dedicated to His Eminence Archbishop Alexander Golitzin, him-

self a preacher of rare power, with deepest gratitude.
36 As prescribed in the Testament of Our Lord, Bk. 1, preserved in the West Syriac Synodi-
con. See Arthur Vööbus, ed. and trans., The Synodicon in the West Syrian Tradition, vol. 1,
CSCO 367–368, Scr. Syr. 161–162 (Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1975).
chapter 13
The Lord Himself, One Lord, One Power: Jewish and

Christian Perspectives on Isaiah 63:9 and Daniel
7:13
Bogdan G. Bucur
Alexander Golitzin impressed upon his students the need to recover the wealth
of the Christian theological tradition by paying special attention to continu-
ities with Second Temple Judaism and parallels with rabbinic Judaism. In the
opening paragraphs of the theological manifesto of the Theophaneia School, he
argued that, since an “enormous library of pseudepigraphical and apocryphal
materials from post-biblical Israel and Christian antiquity … was continuously
copied and presumably valued—though seldom quoted—by Eastern Chris-
tians, and especially by their monks,” the study of early Christian and Byzan-
tine theology must take into account Second Temple apocalyptic literature, the
Qumran Scrolls, and later rabbinic traditions, as each of these “throws new and
welcome light on the sources and continuities of Orthodox theology, liturgy,
and spirituality.”1
The pages to follow heed this call for a new, and yet so traditional, approach
to Christian texts. I suggest that a synoptic approach to the Church’s advocacy
of the full divinity of Christ and to the rabbinic polemics against “two pow-
ers” theologies reveals a certain unexpected convergence, and that this conver-
gence may help Christians discover the richness and complexity of their own
tradition and, perhaps, understand a bit more about their estranged brothers
in the rabbinic tradition.
1 Golitzin, “Theophaneia: Forum on the Jewish Roots of Orthodox Spirituality,” xvii–xx.

the lord himself, one lord, one power 241
1 “The Lord Himself”?: Textual Problems in Isaiah 63:9
The Masoretic and Septuagint versions of Isaiah 63:9 present significant differ-
ences. Moreover, the Hebrew can be read and understood in different ways—
and anyone can appreciate the change from the RSV to the NRSV English trans-
lations of this verse.
8 ‫ַו ְי ִ֥הי ָל ֶ֖הם ְלמוִֹֽשׁי ַע׃‬

‫ ְֽבָּכל־ָצ ָר ָ֣תם׀ ל ֹא ]לו[ ָ֗צר ]ִציר[ וַּמְל ַ֤אְך ָפּ ָני֙ו ֽהוִֹשׁיָ֔ﬠם ְבַּאֲהָב֥תוֹ וְּבֶחְמָל֖תוֹ ֣הוּא‬9
‫ְגָא ָ֑לם ַֽו ְי ַנְטּ ֵ֥לם ַֽו ְי ַנְשּׂ ֵ ֖אם ָכּל־ ְיֵ֥מי עוֹ ָֽלם׃‬
(RSV: 8 […] and he became their savior. 9 In all their affliction he was
afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his
pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days
of old.
NRSV: 8 […] and he became their savior 9 in all their affliction. It was no
messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his
pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days
of old.)
(8.) […] καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτοῖς εἰς σωτηρίαν (9.) ἐκ πάσης θλίψεως οὐ πρέσβυς
οὐδὲ ἄγγελος ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς κύριος ἔσωσεν αὐτοὺς διὰ τὸ ἀγαπᾶν αὐτοὺς καὶ φείδε-
σθαι αὐτῶν αὐτὸς ἐλυτρώσατο αὐτοὺς καὶ ἀνέλαβεν αὐτοὺς καὶ ὕψωσεν αὐτοὺς
πάσας τὰς ἡμέρας τοῦ αἰῶνος.
([…] And he became to them salvation out of all affliction. No ambas-

sador, no angel, but the Lord himself saved them, because he loved them
and had compassion on them; he himself ransomed them and took them
up and lifted them up all the days of old.)
The culprits for these variations are two words in 63:9, ‫ ל ֹא‬and ‫צר‬. In the for-
mer case, the question is whether to choose the ketiv ‫“( לא‬not”) or the qere, the
homophone ‫“( לו‬to him”).2 As for ‫צר‬, the question is whether to accept the MT
vocalization of ‫“( ַצר‬constraint,” “distress,” “affliction”) or to vocalize it as ‫ִציר‬,
2 David Flusser ( Judaism of the Second Temple Period: Qumran and Apocalypticism [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007], 61–64) notes that the reading ‫ לוא‬found in the Great Isa-
iah Scroll at Qumran should not be interpreted as a synthesis of the ketiv ‫‘( לא‬not’) and the
qere ‫“( לו‬to him”) “because the plene orthography ‫ לוא‬is typical in Qumran texts” (62).
242 bucur
which would yield “messenger.” In addition, the first words of 63:9 (“in all their
afflictions”) can either be linked to the preceding ones in 63:8 (“and he became
their savior in all their afflictions”), or understood as the beginning of a new
phrase (“In all their afflictions,” etc. …). These two moving pieces can, theoret-
ically, yield the following four combinations:
1. ‫ לא‬+ ‫ַצר‬: In all their afflictions he was not afflicted and the angel of his Face
saved them
2. ‫ לו‬+ ‫ַצר‬: In all their afflictions he was afflicted and the angel of his Face
saved them
3. ‫ לא‬+ ‫ִציר‬: […] in all their afflictions. No messenger or angel—his Face saved
them.
4. ‫ לו‬+ ‫ִציר‬: […] in all their afflictions. He had a messenger and the angel of
his Face saved them.
Leaving aside ‫ לו‬+ ‫ִציר‬, a combination that makes no real sense of this verse,
the first three possibilities have all been entertained by scribes, translators, and
interpreters. The first option is represented by the MT as written (ketiv), by the
Vulgate3 and the Targum;4 the second option is the MT according to the sug-
gested reading (qere); the third option corresponds to the LXX. Judging from
the LXX of Isa 63:9 (ἐκ πάσης θλίψεως οὐ πρέσβυς οὐδὲ ἄγγελος ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς κύριος
ἔσωσεν αὐτούς) it appears that the original sense was ‫ִציר‬, which later gave way to
‫ ;ַצר‬the Targum and Vulgate may represent “an intermediate stage” on the way
to the final form of the MT.5
The fluctuation in vocalization and the option for the qere or ketiv of Isaiah
6:9 are not a case of scribal accident or dispassionate philological reasoning;
rather, certain theological and polemical agendas have left their mark in the
text.6 A brief survey of the reception history of our text will shed some light on
this point.
3 Jerome, Comm. Isa. 17.29: in omni tribulatione eorum non est tribulatus et angelus faciei eius sal-
vavit eos. Cf. Jerome’s witness about the coexistence of the qere and ketiv in his time: “Where
we have translated, In all their trouble he was not troubled, what is expressed in Hebrew as
lo and is an adverb of negation can be read as not and as he” (PL 24:615 AB; trans. Thomas
P. Scheck, in St. Jerome: Commentary on Isaiah; Origen Homilies 1–9 on Isaiah, Ancient Chris-
tian Writers 68 [Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2015], 805).
4 “Whenever they sinned against Him, that He might have brought upon them distress, He did
not distress them (‫ ;)ָלא ָאִﬠיק ְלהוֹן‬but an angel was sent from Him, who in His mercy redeemed
them.” Cf. Peshitta, “In all their afflictions he did not afflict them” (‫ܢ‬熏ܽ‫ܐܢ‬
ܶ 犏‫ ܰܐܠ‬焏‫)ܴܠ‬.
ܷ
5 This “evolutionary” interpretation is advocated by Flusser, Judaism of the Second Temple
Period, 63.
6 For a rich dossier of relevant texts comprising the theological agenda of depicting divine work
without mediators, see Mauro Pesce, Dio senza mediatori. Una tradizione teologica dal giu-
daismo al cristianesimo (Brescia: Paideia, 1979).
It should be noted at the outset, however, that the Ancients viewed much
of this rather differently, assuming, quite simply, that divine providence fur-
nished us with more than one “correct” and theologically edifying text. On the
Christian side, Jerome’s Commentary on Isaiah quotes both the Hebrew and the
Greek, notes the various possible readings of the Hebrew, and, without express-
ing any preference, proceeds to deliver exegetical and theological observations
on each variant.7 On the rabbinic side, despite the unquestioned authority of
the MT, several midrashim, including one in the Passover Haggadah, although
very likely aware of the LXX reading of Isa 63:9, use a very similarly worded
phrase to make their emphatic profession of faith: “the Lord brought us forth
from Egypt not by means of an angel, not by means of a seraph, not by means
of a messenger, but rather the Holy One by himself.”
2 Learned Fathers and Rabbis on “The Lord Himself”
Christian exegesis of Isa 63:9 seems unanimous in interpreting “the Lord” chris-
tologically and his saving action as referring to the salvation brought by Christ.
Irenaeus of Lyon exploits the angelic–divine contrast in the LXX version in
order to find scriptural confirmation that Jesus was both God (as opposed to
a mere prophet)8 and truly and fully human (as opposed to a mere angel).9
Tertullian, Cyprian, and Oecumenius make the same argument with explicit
7 Jerome, Comm. Isa. 17.29 (PL 24:615 AB; trans. Scheck, 805): “Where we have translated, In all
their trouble he was not troubled, what is expressed in Hebrew as lo and is an adverb of nega-
tion can be read as not and as he … On the other hand, the Septuagint recorded something
else, that is not found in the Hebrew.”
8 Irenaeus, Epid. 88; 94 (trans. John Behr, St Irenaeus of Lyon: On the Apostolic Preaching [Crest-
wood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997], 94, 97): “And that He Himself was going to
effect, by Himself, this blessing and to redeem us Himself by His blood, Isaias announces,
saying: Not an intercessor nor an angel, but the Lord Himself saved them because he loves
them and spared them; He Himself redeemed them [Isa 63:9] … for it is no longer an inter-
cessor, Moses, nor an angel, Elias, but the Lord Himself who saves us …”
9 Irenaeus, Haer. 3.20.3–4 (Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, eds., Irénée de Lyon. Contre
les hérésies. Livre III, SC 211 [Paris: Cerf, 1974], 392, 394), my translation: “Wherefore, then, the
Lord himself [gave] him who is from the Virgin, Emmanuel, as the sign of our salvation, since
it was the Lord Himself who saved those who, of themselves, had no means be saved … Again,
that the one who would save us would be neither a mere human, nor some fleshless being—
for the angels are without flesh—he announced beforehand, saying: ‘Neither an elder, nor
angel, but the Lord Himself will save them because He loves them, and will spare them: He
will Himself set them free.’”
244 bucur
reference to Isa 63:9,10 whereas the Epistle to Diognetus and Ps.-Hippolytus’

Paschal homily seem to allude to it.11
Tertullian’s polemical engagements against Marcionites, Valentinians, and
Ebionites offer the occasion for more detailed expositions. In Against Marcion
he can extract from Isa 63:9 the proof that the providential transition from
the Law and the prophets to Christ was not, as his dualist opponent claimed,
a radical break with the Old Testament demiurge.12 Against Valentinians and
Ebionites, Tertullian’s Christology finds support in Isaiah: neither did Christ
take on angelic (rather than human) nature;13 nor was an angel “in him,” as in
the prophet Zechariah (cf. ὁ ἄγγελος ὁ λαλῶν ἐν ἐμοί: Zech 1:9, 13, 14, 17; 2:3, 7; 4:1,
10 Tertullian, Carn. Chr. 14.6 (Ernest Evans, ed., Tertullian’s Treatise on the Incarnation [Lon-
don: SPCK, 1956], 49/49–52/53); Cyprian of Carthage, Test. 2.8 (Wilhelm Hartel, ed.,
S. Thasci Caecili Cypriani opera omnia, CSEL 3/1 [Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1868], 72); Oecumenius, Comm. Apoc. 3.13.6 (Marc de Groote, ed., Oec-
umenii commentarius in Apocalypsin [Louvain: Peeters, 1999], 114; trans. John N. Suggit,
Oecumenius: Commentary on the Apocalypse, Fathers of the Church 112 [Washington, DC:
CUA Press, 2006], 61): “He says, I saw a strong angel proclaiming, ‘Who is worthy to open
the little scroll and break its seal?’ (Rev 5:2) ‘No one, most divine angel,’ one would say to
him; ‘only the incarnate God, who took away sin and who canceled the bond which stood
against us (Col 2:14) and with his own “obedience” (Rom 5:19) healed our “disobedience”’
(Rom 5:19). He says, And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the
little scroll (Rev 5:3). For neither did an angel accomplish this for us, as Isaiah says, ‘Not an
envoy, nor an angel, but he himself saved them because he loved them’ (Isa 63:9) neither
a living man, nor even one of the dead.”
11 Diogn. 7.2 (Henri-Irénée Marrou, ed., À Diognète, SC 33 [Paris: Cerf, 1965], 66, 68; my transla-
tion): “He did not send some subordinate to humankind—whether an angel, or an archon,
or one of those given charge over earthly things, or one of those entrusted with adminis-
tering heavenly things—but the maker and fashioner of all things himself … him did he
send to them”; Ps.-Hippolytus, In sanctum Pascha 45 (Pierre Nautin, ed., Homélies pascales
I, SC 27 [Paris: Cerf, 2003], 165; my translation): “Seeing us, from heaven, as were being tyr-
annized by death … he entrusted the service on our behalf neither to his angels nor to his
archangels; but the Word himself, in obedience to his Father’s commands, took over the
whole battle for us.”
12 Tertullian, Marc. 4.22.11 (Ernest Evans, ed., Tertullian: Adversus Marcionem, 2 vols. [Oxford:
Clarendon, 1972], 1:382/383): “So that even though there has been a transference made of
this hearing from Moses and from Elijah to Christ, this is not as from one god to another
god, nor to a different Christ, but by the Creator to his own Christ, in accordance with
the demise of the old covenant and the succession of the new: Not a delegate, says Isaiah,
nor a messenger, but God himself shall save them, now in his own person preaching, and
fulfilling the law and the prophets.”
13 Tertullian, Carn. 14.6 (Evans, Tertullian’s Treatise on the Incarnation, 48/49–50/51): “ ‘But,’
say they, ‘Christ was also clothed upon with an angel.’ By what method? ‘The same by
which he might have been clothed with man.’ Then the reason for it also is the same. For
Christ to be clothed with manhood, man’s salvation was the reason, the restitution of that
which had perished. Man had perished: it was man that must be restored … how shall he
4, 5);14 nor was he himself an angel, such as Gabriel or Michael, since Isaiah’s
title “angel of great counsel” (Isa 9:5, LXX: μεγάλης βουλῆς ἄγγελος) is a designa-
tion of his function, not nature.15 Indeed, Tertullian concludes, “What more do
we need, when we hear Isaiah crying out, Not an angel nor a delegate, but the
Lord himself has saved them?”
In his interpretation of Song 1:2 (“Let Him kiss me with the kisses of his
mouth”), Origen compares the preparatory revelation on Sinai, mediated by
angels (“His holy angels put themselves at my service and ministered to me,
bringing me the Law as a betrothal gift; for the Law, it is said, was ordained by
angels in the hand of a mediator [Gal 3:19]”) with the direct, unmediated pres-
ence of the incarnate Logos:
The kisses are Christ’s, which He bestowed on His Church when at His
coming, being present in the flesh, He in His own person spoke to her
the words of faith and love and peace, according to the promise of Isaiah
who, when sent beforehand to the Bride, had said: Not a messenger, nor
an angel, but the Lord Himself shall save us (Isa 63:9–10).16
On the rabbinic side of Wirkungsgeschichte, the preference for the reading “in
their afflictions he was afflicted” (rather than “in their afflictions he was not
afflicted”) was coextensive with a theology affirming God’s solidarity and co-
suffering with Israel—though the precise causal relation or possible polemical
intention are difficult to determine.17 As for the difference between the MT ver-
be thought to have clothed himself with an angel when he is made lower than the angels
by being made man, as being flesh and soul (Ps 8:5) …”
14 Tertullian, Carn. 14.6 (Evans, Tertullian’s Treatise on the Incarnation, 52/53): “This view of
the matter could have suited Ebion, who determines that Jesus is a bare man, merely of
the seed of David, and therefore not also the Son of God … so as to state that an angel was
in him in the same way as in Zechariah.”
15 Tertullian, Carn. 14.6 (Evans, Tertullian’s Treatise on the Incarnation, 52/53): “Certainly he is
described as the angel of great counsel, ‘angel’ meaning ‘messenger,’ by a term of office, not
of nature: for he was to announce to the world the Father’s great project, that concerned
with the restitution of man. Yet he is not on that account to be understood as an angel, in
the sense of a sort of Gabriel or Michael.”
16 Origen, Comm. Cant. 1.5, 8 (Luc Brésard, Henri Crouzel, Marcel Borret, Origène: Com-
mentaire sur le Cantique des Cantiques, Tome I, SC 375 [Paris: Cerf, 2006], 180, 182; trans.
R.P. Lawson, Origen: The Song of Songs, Commentary and Homilies, Ancient Christian Writ-
ers 26 [Mahvah, NJ: Paulist, 1957], 60). Origen’s connection with Song 1:1 is followed by
Jerome (Comm. Isa. 17.29 [PL 24:615 C]).
17 See Flusser, Judaism of the Second Temple Period, 64: “Did the qere ‫‘( לו‬to him’) allow the
verse to be ‘harnessed’ as a prooftext to the idea that God suffers with Israel, or perhaps
the contrary, the notion of divine commiseration with Israel gave rise to the qere ‫ ”?לו‬At
246 bucur
sion, “the angel saved them,” and the LXX reading, “it was no angel but the Lord
himself who saved them,” it will become evident that rabbinic texts appeal to
(something like) the latter in theophanic passages—God’s revelatory, saving,
or punishing interventions—in an effort to subvert theological views deemed
heretical and dangerous.18
Mekhilta de R. Ishmael twice refers to the smiting of the Egyptian firstborn to
emphasize that the agent was none but the Lord acting alone and not “through
an angel or through a messenger.” In a bit of circular reasoning, the “I” doing the
smiting in Exod 12:12 is shown to be the Lord alone because in Exod 12:29 the
smiting is attributed to “the Lord”; then, “the Lord” in Exod 12:29 must be under-
stood to act directly, without angelic intermediaries, because at Exod 12:12 he
speaks in the first person singular, “I will smite.”19
Even the theophany on Sinai had to be safeguarded from any notion of
angelic mediation, as is the case in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, Version B. The famous
opening of Pirqe Avot 1.1 (“Moses received Torah from God at Sinai. He transmit-
ted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, the prophets
to the members of the Great Assembly”) is here given the following clarifica-
tion:
Moses received Torah from Sinai. Not from the mouth of an angel and not
from the mouth of a Seraph, but from the mouth of the King over the kings
of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.20
any rate, from this vantage point the Christian “stretching” of divine com-passion into in-
hominization, death, and descent to Sheol, appears as a difference of degree, not kind.
Cf. Tatian, Or. 13: τὰ παθήματα τοῦ Θεοῦ; τοῦ πεπονθότος Θεοῦ; Ignatius, Eph. 1.1: αἵματι θεοῦ;
Rom. 6.3: μιμητὴν εἶναι τοῦ πάθους τοῦ θεοῦ μου; Tertullian, Carn. 5: passiones Dei; Test Levi
4: ἐπὶ τῷ πάθει τοῦ υψίστοῦ; Melito, Peri Pascha 96: Ὁ κρεμάσας τὴν γῆν κρέμαται. Ὁ πήξας
τοὺς οὐρανοὺς πέπεκται. Ὁ στηρίξας τὰ πάντα ἐπὶ ξύλου ἐστήρικται. Ὁ δεσπότης παρύβρισται.
Ὁ θεὸς πεφόνευται.
18 For the complete dossier of relevant texts and their discussion, see Pesce, Dio senza medi-
atori, 29–47.
19 Mek. R. Ishmael, Pisha 7.2.4; 13.2.3 (trans. Jacob Neusner, ed., Mekhilta According to Rabbi
Ishmael: An Analytical Translation, 2 vols [Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1988], 1:43, 75): “And I will
smite (Exod 12:12): Might I infer that it is to be through an angel or through a messenger?
Scripture says, and the Lord smote all the firstborn (Exod 12:29)—not through an angel or
a messenger”; “that the Lord smote all the firstborn of Egypt (Exod 12:29): Might I infer that
it was through an angel or a messenger? Scripture says, and I will smite (Exod 12:12)—not
through an angel or a messenger.”
20 Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, Version B, 2 (Anthony J. Saldarini, ed., The Fathers According to Rabbi
Nathan/Abot de Rabbi Nathan, Version B: A Translation and Commentary [Leiden: Brill,
1975], 25).
Finally, Sifre Deuteronomy uses Isa 63:9 to differentiate between God’s direct
interaction with Israel and his indirect, angelically mediated, relation with the
nations:
Vengeance is mine, and recompense (Deut 32:35): I will requite it of them,

I myself, not through an angel nor through a messenger, as it is said, Come
now; therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh (Exod 3:10); and, And it
came to pass that might that the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in
the camp of the Assyrians (2Kgs 19:35).21
Deut 32:35 is here taken to represent a mode of intervention different from

that in Isa 3:10 and 2Kgs 19:35—retribution against Israel is exclusively God’s,
whereas the Egyptians and Assyrians are punished by prophetic or angelic
messengers. Similarly, to the lands of the Gentiles God “sends” (‫ )ָשַׁלח‬the rain—
hence, by means of a messenger (‫—)ָשִׁלי ַח‬whereas to the land of Israel he “gives”
(‫ ) ָנַתן‬it directly:
I will give the rain of your land in its season (Deut 11:14). I will give—I
Myself, not by the hands of a messenger—the rain to your land (Deut
11:14)—not the rain of all the lands. Similarly Scripture says, “Who gives
rains upon the earth, and sends waters upon the fields” (Job 5:10).22
The texts surveyed above give evidence of intra-Jewish polemics surround-

ing the questions of direct vs. indirect divine agency and strict monotheism
vs. binitarian monotheism—polemics rather well-known and abundantly dis-
cussed in scholarship.23 As Hindy Najman observes,
21 Sifre Deut. 324 (trans. Reuven Hammer, ed., Sifre: A Tannaitic Commentary on the Book of
Deuteronomy [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986], 336).
22 Sifre Deut. 42.1 (Hammer, Sifre, 86). This notion goes back to earlier tradition: see Deut
32:8–9 (LXX), where the nations are divided “according to the number of the of the
angels of God” (ἀγγέλων Θεοῦ; MT: “the sons of Israel”), whereas the Israelites become
“the Lord’s portion” (μερίς Κυρίου); Jub. 15:31–32 (trans. Orval S. Wintermute, in James
H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. [Garden City, N.Y.: Dou-
bleday, 1985], 2:87): “over Israel he [God] did not cause any angel or spirit to rule because
he alone is their ruler … so that he might guard them and bless them and they might be
his and he might be theirs henceforth and forever.”
23 See Alan F. Segal, Two Powers In Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity And
Gnosticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977); Paul A. Rainbow, “Jewish Monotheism as the Matrix
for New Testament Christology: A Review Article,” NovT 33 (1991): 78–91; Peter Hayman,
“Monotheism—A Misused Word in Jewish Studies?,” JJS 42 (1991): 1–15; Margaret Barker,
The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992);
248 bucur
Jubilees takes every opportunity to elaborate the explicit references to

angels in the biblical texts of Genesis and Exodus, and even, on occa-
sion, to add angels to episodes where they are not mentioned in biblical
texts. In striking contrast, some rabbinic traditions seek to eliminate even
angels who seem to be explicitly mentioned.24
Aside from stripping theophanic passages of any other presence than God’s,
angelic agency is also suppressed by “demoting” angels to signify human
agents—prophets. As examples Najman refers to the contrast between Num
20:16 (“and when we cried to the Lord, he heard our voice, and sent an angel
and brought us out of Egypt,” ‫ )וישלח מלאך ויצאנו ממצרים‬and its interpretation
in Lev. Rab. 1: “The prophets are called malakhim. This is indicated by what is
written, And he sent a messenger (malakh), and brought us forth out of Egypt …
(Num 20:16). Was it then an angel of the Lord? Surely it was Moses! Why then
does it call him ‘malakh’? In fact, from this one learns that prophets are called
malakhim.” “In other words,” explains Najman, “no angel is intended here, but
rather Moses himself.”25 Incidentally, very similar identifications of the “angel”
of Exodus with Moses and of the angel sent to lead Israel into the Holy Land
with Joshua occur in Irenaeus and Eusebius of Caesarea.26
Charles A. Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence (Leiden:

Brill, 1998); the articles collected in Carey C. Newman, James R. Davila, Gladys S. Lewis,
eds., The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Confer-
ence on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Larry W. Hurtado,
“First Century Jewish Monotheism,” JSNT 71 (1998): 3–26; idem, “Monotheism, Principal
Angels, and the Background of Christology,” in Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins, eds.,
Oxford Handbook to the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 546–564;
Daniel Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven; or, The Making of a Heresy,” in Hindy Najman
and Judith R. Newman, eds., The Idea of Biblical Interpretation: Essays in Honor of James
L. Kugel (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 331–370; Moshe Idel, Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (Con-
tinuum, London, New York, 2007); Andrei A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, TSAJ 107
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005); idem, Yahoel and Metatron: Aural Apocalypticism and the
Origins of Early Jewish Mysticism, TSAJ 169 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017).
24 Hindy Najman, “Angels at Sinai: Exegesis, Theology and Interpretive Authority,” DSD 7
(2000): 313–333 at 328.
25 Najman, “Angels at Sinai,” 329. Cf. Mek. R. Shimon b. Yohai, Kaspa 81.1 (David Nelson, ed.,
Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai [Philadelphia, Pa.: Jewish Publication Society, 2006],
370): “I am sending an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place
that I have made ready (Exod 23:20): This [refers to] a prophet (‫)זה נביא‬. And thus Scripture
says, And angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim (Judg 2:1).”
26 Irenaeus, Epid. 94 (Behr, St Irenaeus of Lyon: On the Apostolic Preaching, 97): “for it is no
longer an intercessor, Moses, nor an angel, Elias, but the Lord Himself who saves us …”;
Eusebius, Dem. ev. 4.17 (Ivar A. Heikel, ed., Eusebius Werke VI: Demonstratio euangelica, Die
When surveying the reception history of the Bible, special attention must be
afforded to texts such as the Passover Haggadah or the Byzantine festal hymns.
These are texts which, by their characteristic of liturgical embeddedness (and,
hence, repetitive usage in a ritual context), had come, by the end of the tenth
century CE, to enjoy far greater popularity than anything else written by the
Fathers of the Church or the great Rabbis of the Synagogue. They ought to be
regarded as a distillate of their respective theological traditions.
3 “The Lord Himself” in the Passover Haggadah
Older scholarship debated whether the liturgical script for the Passover seder—
the Passover Haggadah—should be viewed as a product of Second Temple
Judaism or as a post-70CE composition.27 As summarized by Joshua Kulp, the
consensus among rabbinic scholars today is that we are dealing with the prod-
uct of a centuries-long evolution that began after 70CE and stretched well
into the second half of the millennium.28 For as long as the Haggadah was
presumed to be pre-Christian, it was often discussed as the literary source of
Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller 23 [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913], 196–197): Joshua, who

bears the name of the Lord—i.e., for Eusebius, Jesus—is the angel sent to lead Israel into
the Holy Land, just as John the Baptist is the angel sent to prepare his way. Cf. Mark 1:2–4;
Matt 11:9–11.
27 According to Louis Finkelstein (“The Oldest Midrash: Pre-Rabbinic Ideals and Teachings
in the Passover Haggadah,” HTR 31 [1938]: 291–317), it was composed “no later than the
Maccabean Age; and probably before that, in the last decades of the third century B.C.”
(298), probably by Simeon the Just (312). By contrast, Solomon Zeitlin (“The Liturgy of the
First Night of Passover,” JQR 38 [1948]: 431–460) concluded that “[t]he Haggadah as it is
now recited belongs to the period after the destruction of the Temple” (460).
28 Joshua Kulp, “The Origins of the Seder and Haggadah,” CBR 4 (2005): 109–134: “Nearly all
scholars agree that there was no seder or haggadah while the Temple still stood” (110);
“Nearly all rabbinic scholars … agree that most of the elements known from the seder
as described in the Mishnah are missing from descriptions in Second Temple literature,
including Jubilees, Josephus, Philo, the Gospels, and the sections of the Mishnah and the
Tosefta which deal with the Passover as offered in the Temple (m. Pesahim 5–9). This
includes the absence of a seder or a haggadah” (112); “Some of the most famous elements
of the current seder—recitations such as the dayyenu [‘it is enough for us’] and the ha
lachma anya [‘this is the bread of affliction’]—were not part of the evening’s ritual until
the post-Talmudic period” (111); “In all likelihood, many of the elements of the midrash as it
appears in geonic Haggadot … first emerged in Babylonia in the talmudic and even geonic
periods” (122). See also the meticulous research and similar conclusions of Clemens Leon-
hard, The Jewish Pesach and the Origins of the Christian Easter: Open Questions in Current
Research (Berlin: Walther de Gruyter, 2005), 73–118.
250 bucur
Christian anti-Jewish compositions such as Melito of Sardis’Peri Pascha.29 This

is no longer tenable today. It is rather more credible to posit that the Passover
Haggadah was constructed in direct and deliberate opposition to Christian
teachings and practices30—although one must take into account the dating
of the various elements and layers in the Haggadah, and consider that the
religious polemics discerned in rabbinic texts does not necessarily and always
carry over into the later Haggadah, which remains only marginally polemi-
cal.31
Let us consider a fragment of the Haggadah’s extensive midrash on Deut
26:5–9 (cf. m. Pesahim 10.4: “[the father] expounds from My father was a wan-
dering Aramean [Deut 26:5] until he completes the whole entire passage”). This
addition “seems to have entered the text in late geonic times”32 and is generally
acknowledged to carry polemical (anti-Christian) freight.33 The passage most
29 Eric Werner, “Melito of Sardes, the First Poet of Deicide,” HUCA 27 (1966): 191–210; David
Flusser, “Some Notes on Easter and the Passover Haggadah,” Imm 7 (1977): 52–60; Stu-
art G. Hall, “Melito in the Light of the Passover Haggadah,” JTS 22 (1971): 29–46. In a direct
response to Flusser and Werner, Michael D. Brocke (“On the Jewish Origin of the ‘Imprope-
ria,’” Imm 7 [1977]: 44–51) finds their case for “a straight dependence between specific
Jewish and Christian texts” completely unconvincing (44).
30 This approach is represented, in its maximalist form, by Israel Yacob Yuval, Two Nations in
the Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages [Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 2006], 87, 73–75, 81. A large section of the book (56–91)
expands upon and refines Yuval’s earlier study, “Easter and Passover as Early Christian Dia-
logue,” in Paul Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman, eds., Passover and Easter: Origin and
History to Modern Times (South Bend, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1999), 98–106.
Whereas Werner had argued that the Passover Haggadah gave the impetus for Melito’s
Peri Pascha, a parody with a sharp anti-Jewish twist, Yuval finds that the Passover Hag-
gadah is shot through with implicit anti-Christian polemics: telling the story of Passover
via a midrash on Deuteronomy 26 aims at “countering the Christian attempt to appro-
priate the story of the Exodus from Egypt” via a Christological “second story”; ha lachma
anya (“this is the bread of affliction”) and the stern demand to explain the meaning of
the Passover foods is a denial of the Christian (Eucharistic) exegesis of the Passover lamb,
bread, and wine; the suppression of references to Moses is “pulling the rug from under
those who regarded Moses as an archetype of Jesus.”
31 See Leonhard, “Die Pesachhaggada als Spiegel religiöser Konflikte,” in Albert Gerhards and
Stephan Wahle, eds., Kontinuität und Unterbrechung: Gottesdienst und Gebet in Judentum
und Christentum (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005), 143–171. According to Leonhard ( Jewish
Pesach, 43, n. 86), “traces of interreligious conflicts that are found in the Haggada are
either reflections of medieval encounters or the consequence of quotations of rabbinic
texts (that may reflect Jewish opposition against Christianity in late Antiquity) within the
Haggada.”
32 Leonhard, Jewish Pesach, 107.
33 See Franz E. Meyer, “Die Pesach-Haggada und der Kirchenvater Justinus Martyr,” in Peter
von der Osten-Sacken, ed., Treue zur Thora: Beiträge zur Mitte des christlich-jüdischen
relevant to the topic at hand is the midrash on Deut 26:8 (“And the Lord brought
us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and
with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders”). The text reads as
follows:
And the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt: not by the hands of an angel,
and not the hands of a seraph, and not by the hands of a messenger,
but the Holy One, blessed be he, himself, in his own glory and in his
person. As it is said: For I will go through the land of Egypt in that night
and will smite every first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast;
and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord
(Exod 12:12).
For I will go through the land of Egypt in that night: I and not an angel.
I will smite every first-born in the land of Egypt: I and not a seraph.
And against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I, and not a
messenger.
I am the Lord: I am He, and no other.
With a mighty hand: this is the blight, as it is said … (Exod 9:3)
and with an outstretched arm: this is the sword, as it is said … (1 Chron
21:16)
and with great terribleness: this is the revelation of the Divine Presence,
as it is said … (Deut 4:34)
and with signs: this is the rod of Moses, as it is said … (Exod 4:17)
and with wonders: this is the blood, as it is said … (Joel 3:3).34
Deut 26:8 is explained in light of the peculiar, LXX-like, reading of Isa 63:9
(evidently not marked as a biblical reference). “As it is said” is, rather, used to
introduce quotations from Exod 12:12, 9:3, 1Chron 21:16, Deut 4:34, Exod 4:17,
and Joel 3:3. Of these, Exod 12:12 has been further expanded into an addi-
Gesprächs. Festschrift für Günther Harder zum 75. Geburtstag (Berlin: Institut für Kirche
und Judentum, 1977), 84–87; David Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (Lon-
don: Athlone, 1956; repr. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 326. Even Leonhard agrees that
the Haggadah subscribes to the polemical agenda of the rabbinic texts that constituted its
source: “Die Wendung ‘nicht durch einen Gesandten’, die in verschiedenen Formen in der
rabbinischen Literatur belegt ist … kann dort und vielleicht auch bei ihrer Übernahme in
die Haggada als antichristliche Bemerkung verstanden werden” (Leonhard, “Die Pesach-
haggada,” 165).
34 Nahum N. Glatzer, ed., ‫הגדה של פסה‬. The Passover Haggadah with English Translation
Introduction and Commentary, based on the commentaries of E.D. Goldschmidt (New York,
NY: Schocken, 1969), 36 (Hebrew)/37 (English).
252 bucur
tional midrash, once again by invoking the phrase (not marked as Scripture)
“neither an angel nor a messenger.”
The insistence on the sole agency of the Lord not only denies any angelic
involvement in the Exodus, but also suppresses any reference to Moses as a
messenger—even though both are affirmed by a number of biblical texts.35
Scholars have sometimes interpreted this strategy as “a sweeping rebuttal” of
“the ideational directions that elevated Moses to the rank of demigod, whether
in the teachings of the Samaritans or in Alexandrian Jewish-Hellenistic
thought”36 and “an emphatic protest against the belief in angels as God’s inter-
mediaries.”37 Indeed, during the Second Temple era the saving agent in the
Exodus narrative acquired a rather lofty status: Isa 63:10 refers to it as the “holy
spirit” whom the Israelites have rebelled against and grieved (cf. the guiding
and guarding angel of Exod 23:21, who embodies the divine Name and would
therefore not forgive any rebellion on the part of Israel);38 Jubilees understands
him as “the angel of the Face”; Philo refers to him as God’s true reason/logos (τὸν
ὀρθὸν αὐτοῦ λόγον), the first-born Son (πρωτόγονον υἱόν), “the vice-regent of the
great king” (μεγάλου βασιλέως ὕπαρχος); the Apocalypse of Abraham calls him
“Yahoel of the same name” and describes him as “a power through the medium
of his [God’s] ineffable name”; Targum Ps.-Jonathan to Exodus identifies him
35 E.g., Exod 3:10 (God sends Moses: ‫ ְוֶאְשָׁלֲחָך‬/ἀποστείλω σε); Num 20:16 (“the Lord sent
an angel—‫ ַו ִיְּשַׁלח ַמְלָאְך‬/ἀποστείλας ἄγγελον—and brought us out of Egypt”); 1 Sam 12:8
(“the Lord sent—‫ ַו ִיְּשַׁלח‬/ἀπέστειλε—Moses and Aaron who brought your ancestors out
of Egypt”); Exod 12:23 (“the destroyer” as divine agent).
36 David Henshke, “‘The Lord Brought Us Forth from Egypt’: On the Absence of Moses in the
Passover,” AJSR 31 (2007): 61–73 at 67–68. For “exalted Moses” lore in Jubilees, Ezekiel the
Tragedian, Philo, and the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, see Wayne A. Meeks, The Prophet
King: Moses Traditions and the Johannine Christology (Leiden: Brill, 1967); Andrei A. Orlov,
“Exodus 33 On God’s Face: A Lesson From the Enochic Tradition,” SBLSP 39 (2000): 130–
147; idem, “In the Mirror of the Divine Face: The Enochic Features of the Exagoge of Ezekiel
the Tragedian,” in George Brooke, Hindy Najman and Loren Stuckenbruck, eds., The Sig-
nificance of Sinai: Traditions about Sinai and Divine Revelation in Judaism and Christianity
(Leiden: Brill, 2008), 183–199.
37 Finkelstein, “Oldest Midrash,” 307.
38 On the introduction of “holy spirit” language in the Exodus account, in Hag 2:4–5 and
Isa 63:7–14, see John R. Levison, The Jewish Origin of Christian Pneumatology. The 2017
Duquesne University Eleventh Annual Holy Spirit Lecture (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne Uni-
versity Press, 2018), 8: “Haggai and the author of a lament in Isaiah 63:7–14 accomplished
something unprecedented: they introduced the holy spirit into the traditions of the exo-
dus, in which God had rescued Israel from Egypt through a cadre of divine agents—pillars,
an angel, clouds, and God’s presence or panim. Now, claimed these prophets, the holy
spirit took on the role of those agents by standing in Israel’s midst and guiding them, once
again, to the promised land.”
as the archangel Michael, “the Prince of Wisdom.”39 Among Christians, from

Jude 5 and 1Corinthians 10 to Justin Martyr, Melito, and Clement of Alexandria,
the identification of Jesus as the one who led Israel out of Egypt to Sinai, and
through the desert into the Holy Land, was virtually unanimous.40 All of these
speculations have been the target of the Rabbis’ repeated affirmation, ritual-
ized and popularized in the Haggadah, that it was, in fact, “neither an angel,
nor a messenger, but the Lord himself” that saved Israel.
Some fragments from the Cairo Geniza (as well as Saʾadia Gaon’s text of the
Haggadah) have an interesting addition: “not by the hands of an angel, and not
the hands of a seraph, and not by the hands of a messenger, and not by a word”
(or even “not by means of the word,” ‫—לא על ידי הדיבר‬or, as Boyarin renders it,
“not by means of the Logos”). Some scholars hypothesized that this phrase tar-
geted non-rabbinic, or perhaps Johannine Christian, speculations on Logos.41
39 Jub. 27.29 (Wintermute, 2:54); Philo, Agr. 51 (trans. Francis Henry Colson, George Herbert
Whitaker, Philo III: On the Unchangeableness of God. On Husbandry. Concerning Noah’s
Work as a Planter. On Drunkenness. On Sobriety, LCL 247 [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1930], 134); Apoc. Ab. 10:3, 8 (trans. Ryszard Rubinkiewicz, in Ryszard
Rubinkiewicz and Horace Lunt, “Apocalypse of Abraham,” in James H. Charlesworth, ed.,
The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 vols. [New York: Doubleday, 1983–1985], 1:693–694);
Tg. Ps.-Jon. Exod 24:1: “And Michael, the Prince of Wisdom, said to Moses, Come up etc.”
(cf. Exod 24:1, “and he said to Moses, Come up etc.”) See also b. Sanh. 38, where a certain
min invokes Exod 24:1 as proof of a second divine power: “It is written, ‘And to Moses he
said, come up unto the YHWH [Exod 24:1].’ It should have said: ‘Come up to me’!” Rav Idit
responds that “[t]his was Metatron, whose name is like the name of his master, as it is
written: ‘for My name is in him’ [Exod 23:21],” and adds immediately that, far from wor-
shipping Metatron, Israel never even accepted him as a messenger: “We have sworn that
we would not even receive him as a guide, for it is written ‘If Your face goes not [do not
bring us up from here]’ [Exod 33:15].”
40 Jude 5: Ἰησοῦς λαὸν ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου σώσας; 1Cor 10:9: μηδὲ ἐκπειράζωμεν τὸν Χριστόν, καθώς
τινες αὐτῶν ἐπείρασαν, καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν ὄφεων ἀπώλλυντο; Justin, Dial. 120.3: “Jesus, who led your
fathers out of Egypt”; Melito, Peri Pascha 84–85; Clement of Alexandria, Paed. 1.7.56–60
(“our pedagogue, the holy God Jesus” is the “Lord” who led Israel out of Egypt and through
the desert, and gave the Law through his servant Moses).
41 According to Finkelstein (“Oldest Midrash,” 296, n. 13), the text is targeting “the Alexan-
drian doctrine of the Logos.” Shlomo Pines (“From Darkness into Great Light,” Imm 4
[1974]: 47–51 at 50) also holds that “the passage in the Haggadah has the function of a
polemic,” being “crystallized out of a struggle with Hellenistic texts,” and concludes that
“there is no need … to look in the rest of the words mentioned for a polemic against the
doctrine of the Christian Logos.” On the contrary, Yuval (Two Nations in the Womb, 80,
n. 121) maintains that this addition is made deliberately and “in clear opposition to John
1:1.” Daniel Boyarin (“Beyond Judaisms: Metatron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient
Judaism,” JSJ 41 [2010]: 323–365 at 333) refers to the Haggadah in the course of his analysis
254 bucur
Given its late date, however, this addition is more likely to reflect medieval
anti-Christian polemics.42
To conclude, Jewish tradition seems determined to find a robust Scriptural
denial of “binitarian” conceptions at all cost—even at the cost of using a read-
ing of that verse which is at odds with the MT and coincides in substance with
what Christians were reading in the LXX.43 If the target of the Rabbis’ rebuttal is
the Christian exegesis of the Exodus, more needs to be said about the Christian
side of the story.
4 “The Lord Himself” in Byzantine Hymnography
To understand the view that was popular among Christians let us now consider
the use of Isaiah 63 in two Byzantine hymns dating anywhere from the fifth
to the eleventh centuries and widely disseminated in the liturgical books.44
of b. Sanh. 38b, summarizing the rabbinic reasoning as follows: “[A]s the Haggadah has it:
Not by means of an angel, and not by means of an agent, and not by means of the Logos
(that one’s only in old manuscripts). ‘You may exist, Metatron, say the Rabbis, but we will
not worship you.’ Somebody, it would seem was doing just that.”
42 As noted by Leonhard (“Die Pesachhaggada als Spiegel religiöser Konflikte,” 165), this
expansion is not present in the Palestinian Haggadot and cannot, therefore, be taken as a
witness to a rebuttal of Christian conceptions of Logos before the middle ages.
43 As an aside, a similar instance of the Haggadah using a biblical text in a non-MT version
that corresponds to what is found in the LXX, also occurs with the phrase “and with great
terribleness” (‫מ ָרא ָגּד ֹל‬
ֹ ‫ )וְּב‬in Deut 26:8. The exegesis set forth in the Haggadah—“And with
great terribleness: this is the revelation (unveiling, uncovering, denuding) of the Shekhi-
nah (‫ זו גלוי שכינה‬.‫מ ָרא ָגּד ֹל‬ ֹ ‫—”)וְּב‬is arrived at by reading ‫( ַמ ְרֶאה‬marʾeh) instead of ‫מוֹ ָרא‬
(moraʾ). Yet, this reading is not derived from the verse invoked as its support (Deut 4:34) in
its MT reading (which uses the very same word, ‫מוֹ ָרא‬, in the plural: ‫ ;)וְּבמוֹ ָרִאים ְגּד ִֹלים‬it is,
rather, consonant with the LXX version of both Deut 26:8 and 4:34, “and with great visions”
(καὶ ἐν ὁράμασι μεγάλοις) and effectively recuperates what seems to have been the original
reading, now extant only in the Greek. See Finkelstein, “Oldest Midrash”: “In fact, there
can be little doubt that … the verse ubemoraʾ gadol which is translated ‘and with great ter-
ribleness,’ was originally read ubemarʾeh gadol, ‘and with a great Vision.’ Only the reading
ubemarʾeh gadol could justify the interpretation, ‘this refers to the visible manifestation
of God.’” (310); “Similar renderings of ubemoraʾ are found also in the Septuagint, Peshitta,
and Targumim to Deut 4:34 and Jer. 32:21. It is also found in Peshitta and Targumim to
Deut 34:12. The Vulgate, which in all the passages cited follows the Masoretic readings,
translates the phrase in Deut 4:34, horribiles visiones, combining both senses” (310, n. 39).
44 Σταυρωθέντος σου Χριστέ, which is part of the First Royal Hour of Great Friday, is ascribed to
Cyril of Alexandria. In any case, it cannot postdate the 8th–9th century, when this hymno-
graphic material was codified. The second hymn, Ἐλήλυθας ἐκ Παρθένου, is the Eirmos
of Ode 4 in the Canon of the Resurrection for Tone 2 ascribed to John Mavropous, the
As in the case of the Haggadah, the value of these hymns resides, precisely,
not in their authorship, origin, or age, but in their liturgical usage. Indeed,
once injected into the “lifeblood” of Church worship, this exegesis assumed
an extensive presence across temporal, cultural, and linguistic borders, even-
tually garnering widespread acceptance and reverence to an extent unrivaled
by other patristic voices.
Σταυρωθέντος σου Χριστέ, ἀνῃρέθη ἡ τυραννίς, ἐπατήθη ἡ δύναμις τοῦ ἐχθροῦ·

οὔτε γὰρ Ἄγγελος, οὐκ ἄνθρωπος, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ὁ Κύριος ἔσωσας ἡμᾶς. Δόξα σοι.
By your crucifixion, O Christ, the tyranny was destroyed, the power of the
enemy was trampled underfoot. For it was neither an angel nor a man,
but the Lord himself that saved us. Glory to you!
Ἐλήλυθας ἐκ Παρθένου οὐ πρέσβυς οὐκ Ἄγγελος, ἀλλ’ αὐτὸς ὁ Κύριος, σεσαρ-

κωμένος, καὶ ἔσωσας, ὅλον με τὸν ἄνθρωπον· διὸ κραυγάζω σοι· Δόξα τῇ δυνάμει
σου Κύριε.
You have come from the Virgin, incarnate—neither a messenger nor

an angel, but the Lord Himself—and have saved the whole of me, of
humankind (saved me, humanity, entirely); therefore I cry to you: Glory
to your power, O Lord!
Both hymns are, essentially, doxologies (Δόξα σοι, Δόξα τῇ δυνάμει σου Κύριε) tak-
ing as their “pretext” Christ’s Incarnation and Crucifixion. Each of these “great
and paradoxical mysteries,” to invoke a frequent liturgical formula, are under-
stood as distinct yet complementary specifications of Isaiah’s prophetic text.
In other words, the hymnographer sees, encapsulated in Isa 63:9 LXX, the para-
dox of the “Lord himself” becoming flesh and being crucified (σεσαρκωμένος,
σταυρωθέντος). God’s supreme abasement—the wondersome revelation of his
supreme power—is highlighted by being contrasted to the fictional alterna-
tive of a “merely” human or angelic Savior. The ensuing message is that the
“tyranny” could not have been broken and “all of humanity” been saved by
either human or angelic agency.
Having in mind the use of Isa 63:9 in the Passover Haggadah, the Paschal
allusions in Σταυρωθέντος σου Χριστέ suddenly appear more blatant and potent.
Metropolitan of Euchaites (d. 1079). For the presence of this hymn in the various liturgi-
cal books, see Enrica Follieri, Initia hymnorum ecclesiae Graecae, 5 vols (Rome: Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana, 1963), 3:529, 1:418.
256 bucur
The connection with the Paschal Lamb—quite evident, since the hymn is
recited on Great Friday45—is articulated by referencing the destruction of the
“tyranny” and of “the power of the enemy,” that is, the crushing of Egypt’s might
and its Christian allegorization as the slaying of death and the exodus from
mortality to resurrection.
While the Jewish tradition, which eventually finds liturgical expression in
the Haggadah, is interested in defending and imposing the notion of exclusive
divine agency at the Exodus at the expense of Moses and the angels, the Byzan-
tine hymns give voice to the venerable and widespread Christian tradition,
which identifies “the Lord” of the Exodus narrative (and, implicitly, of the Isaiah
verse) with the “Lord” of Christian worship: Jesus.46 Building on this assump-
tion, the hymns reiterate the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection as
a Christological “second take” on Passover, and stress the complex humanity-
and-divinity of this “Lord”: neither a mere man, too weak to save humankind,
nor a God alien to the reality of humanity’s embodied reality. This last point
becomes clearer when we consider the exegesis of Dan 7:13 in Byzantine hymns
in relation with rabbinic exegesis.
5 “One Lord, Ancient and Young”: Early Christian Exegesis of Daniel

7:13
The two characters in Daniel’s vision, one “ancient of days”—white-haired,

seated on a fiery throne—and the other “like a son of man,” and the eleva-
tion of the latter to a state of universal and eternal rule that replicates that of
45 A later liturgical tradition also adds this hymn to the preparation of the Eucharistic
Gifts—the ritual of the Prothesis (from ἄρτος τῆς προθέσεως/‫ ֶלֶחם ַהָפּ ִנים‬at 1 Sam 21:6/7)—
mandating that it be recited immediately following the words, “Sacrificed is the Lamb of
God, who takes away the sins of the world, for the life of the world and its salvation.” This
tradition postdates the liturgical commentaries of Symeon of Thessalonica (dated shortly
before 1429) and the early sixteenth-century Ps.-Germanos, both of which offer descrip-
tions and interpretations of the Prothesis that mention no addition to “Sacrificed is the
Lamb of God …” (PG 155:264; PG 98:397). At some point, however, the hymn found its
way into the ritual of the Preparation, and was printed in the Greek Hieratikon as late
as the 1987 edition. See Ἱερατικόν: Αί θείαι λειτουργίαι Ιωάννου του Χρυσοστόμου, Βασιλείου
του Μεγάλου και των Προηγουμένων μετά της τυπικής αυτών Διατάξεως και τινών απαραιτήτων
ιερών ακολουθιών και ευχών (Athens, Greece: Αποστολική Διακονία, 1987), 95–96.
46 Interpreting biblical theophanies as “Christophanies”—manifestations of the Logos-to-
be-incarnate—was an important “ingredient” in the gradual crystallization of a distinct
Christian exegesis, doctrine, liturgy, and spirituality. See Bogdan G. Bucur, Christophanic
Exegesis and the Making of a Christian Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
the first character, had the potential to be theologically problematic. To quote

Boyarin, “[t]he two-throne apocalypse in Daniel calls up a very ancient strand
in Israel’s religion, one in which, it would seem, the El-like sky god of justice and
the younger rider on the clouds, storm god of war, have not really been merged
as they are for most of the Bible.”47
Perhaps this problem was already apparent long ago, since the angelic pesher
immediately following the vision (Dan 7:15–28) offers a “monotheizing” expla-
nation the Son of Man as an allegorical image for the people of Israel.48 Perhaps,
too, the peculiar reading in the Old Greek, which depicts the one like a son of
man approaching “like” (ὡς) the Ancient of Days rather than “unto” (ἕως) him,
had the same intention of subverting the dangerous binitarian (“Two Powers”)
theology of the text, by merging the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man.49
Perhaps—and perhaps other theories that have been proposed50 make better
sense of this unsolvable textual and theological conundrum.51
What we do know for sure is that rabbinic scholars were concerned by the
potential that a passage such as Daniel 7 (alongside Exod 23:20–23; 15:3) held for
47 Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: New Press,
2012), 46.
48 See Boyarin, Jewish Gospels, 43: “… the author of the book of Daniel, who had Daniel’s
vision itself before him, wanted to suppress the ancient testimony of a more-than-singular
God, using allegory to do so.”
49 This hypothesis is among those noted in passing by Johan Lust, “Dan 7,13 and the Septu-
agint,” in Katrin Hauspie, ed., Messianism and the Septuagint: Collected Essays by J. Lust
(Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004), 1–8 at 5: “the Septuagint may present us with a
correction of the MT and Theodotion, a correction that may have had a theological inten-
tion. The translator could not accept the messianic character of the ‘one like a son of man’
in the MT and Theodotion. He therefore transformed the One ‘like a son of man’ into the
‘Ancient of Days.’” It was developed by Segal, Two Powers, 202: “The LXX apparently trans-
lated ‘the son of man’ vision in such a way as to make one suspicious that very early ‘two
powers’ traditions were being challenged.” Similarly, Loren Stuckenbruck, “ ‘One like a Son
of Man as the Ancient of Days’ in the Old Greek Recension of Daniel 7, 13: Scribal Error or
Theological Translation?,” ZNW 86 (1995): 268–276 at 275: “It is thus tempting to attribute
a monotheizing tendency to the translator, who may have seen a theological difficulty in
the presence of two heavenly figures in a passage that mentions a plurality of thrones.”
50 A thorough but rather more speculative study by Johannes Lust (“Dan 7,13 and the Sep-
tuagint”) argued that the current MT is, in fact, an “early Targum” of the original Hebrew
text of Daniel and that the OG translates accurately that original Hebrew text, now lost, in
which the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man were indeed “one and the same symbol.”
In this case, the distinction between the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man would have
been introduced by the current MT—the Aramaic that supplanted the original Hebrew—
in order to give voice to the apocalyptic-messianist agenda of that “early Targum.” The
weakness of Lust’s intriguing proposal is, clearly, the absence of a Hebrew text to verify it.
51 For an extensive discussion see Bucur, Christophanic Exegesis, 208–214.
258 bucur
heretical interpretation—“two powers in heaven”—and insisted that the one

and same God is “the one of the sea” (a young warrior) and “the one of Sinai”
(the aged judge), and that the two thrones in Daniel’s visions are for the two
aspects of God, justice and mercy.52
Judging from one strand in the Christian reception history of Daniel 7—the
Gospels presuppose the clear distinction between the Ancient of Days and the
Son of Man—the binitarian heresy combatted by the Rabbis most certainly
overlapped with Christianity. As Boyarin observes, in a discussion of Mekhilta
de Rabbi Ishmael to Exod 20:2, the classic anti-binitarian text,
Segal remarks that the text has “identified the people who believe in ‘two
powers in heaven’ as gentiles” (Powers, 41) and then later is somewhat
nonplussed, remarking, “they must have been gentiles well-versed in Jew-
ish tradition to have offered such a dangerous and sophisticated interpre-
tation of Dan 7.9f” (Powers, 55). Well, Gentiles who are so well-versed and
who would make such a dangerous and sophisticated interpretation, pre-
cisely of Daniel 7, are called Christians!53
There is, however, another Christian reading of the Son of Man. In Rev 1:13–14
the exalted Jesus is called “son of man” but is depicted in terms that correspond
to the Ancient of Days of Dan 7:9 (“white hair”). In subsequent centuries many
Christian writers would interpret the two characters as two aspects of Christ.
As I have shown at length elsewhere,54 since the Christological interpretation
of the Ancient of Days (as part of a Christological polymorphism that also sees
the Son of Man as Christ) became a standard occurrence in Byzantine festal
hymnography, it very likely was the more “popular” interpretation. Consider the
following example of hymnographic theology, drawn from a stanza in Romanos
the Melodist’s Second Kontakion on Theophany:
Ἄρωμεν ἅπαντες τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς πρὸς Κύριον τὸν ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, βοῶντες ὡς
Ἱερεμίας: Ὁ ὀφθειυς ἐπὶ γῆς, οὗτος ἐστιν Θεὸς ἡμῶν ὁοστις καὶ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις
θέλων συνανεστράφη θέλων συνανεστράφη, καὶ τροπὴν οὐχ ὑπέμεινεν / ὁ δείξας
έαυτὸν ἐν μορφαῖς τοῖς προφήταις, ὅν Ἰεζεκιὴλ ἐμὶ πύρινον ἅρμα ὥσπερ εἶδος
ἀνδρὸς ἐθεάσατο, καὶ Δανιὴλ ἀνθρώπου ὑιὸν καὶ παλαιὸν ἡμερῶν, τὸν ἀρχαῖον
καὶ νέον ἕνα Κύριον κηρύττων τὸν φανέντα καὶ φωτίσαντα πάντα.
52 See Segal, Two Powers, 33–59, ch. 2: “Conflicting Appearances of God”; Boyarin, “Two Pow-
ers in Heaven; or, The Making of a Heresy.”
53 Boyarin, “Two Powers in Heaven; or, The Making of a Heresy,” 342.
54 Bucur, Christophanic Exegesis, 208–246.
Let us all raise our eyes to God in heaven, as we cry like Jeremiah: The One
who appeared on earth, this is our God, who also willingly lived among
men (cf. Bar 3:38), and underwent no change, who showed himself in dif-
ferent shapes to the prophets, whom Ezekiel contemplated like the form
of a man on the fiery chariot, and Daniel as a son of man and ancient of
days, proclaiming the ancient and the young to be one Lord: The One who
appeared and enlightened all things.55
According to Romanos, then, Daniel 7 proclaims one Lord—specifically, the

one-who-would-be-incarnate, Jesus Christ—simultaneously young and old,
son of man and ancient of days: ἀνθρώπου ὑιὸν καὶ παλαιὸν ἡμερῶν, τὸν ἀρχαῖον
καὶ νέον ἕνα Κύριον. In a similar manner, a homily on the Meeting of the Lord
penned between 325 and the middle of the seventh century, ascribed to
Methodius of Olympus,56 delights in writing that the aged Simeon received in
his arms, as an infant, the Ancient of days, τὸν ἐν νηπιότητι παλαιὸν τῶν ἡμερῶν,
“the preeternal one as an infant,” τὸν ἐν νηπιότητι προαιώνιον, who is none other
than the God of Abraham, the Holy One of Israel, the Mystagogue of Moses and
Lawgiver.57
All of this is nothing new in early Christian literature. It falls, rather, within
the category of “polymorphic Christology,” well known in scholarship on Chris-
tian Origins.58 Moreover, polymorphic Christology remains a theological
option as late as the ninth century—albeit one of doubtful orthodoxy, which
elicited Photius of Constantinople’s criticism. As Kreahling McKay puts it,
“while Photius [Cod. 114] mentions these texts in order to condemn them as
erroneous, his obvious knowledge of them suggests that copies of apocryphal
literature were available for Byzantine theologians to study as late as the ninth
century.”59
55 Romanos, Second Kontakion on Theophany 15 (Grosdidier de Matons, Romanos le Mélode:

Hymnes IX–XX, SC 110 [Paris: Cerf, 1965], 288).
56 Ps-Methodius of Olympus, De Simeone et Anna 6 (PG 18:360C). The homily is printed in
PG 18:348–381. On the question on dating and authorship, see the thorough stylometric
and doctrinal analysis of Vinzenz Buchheit, Studien zu Methodios von Olympos (Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag, 1958), 133–140.
57 Ps-Methodius of Olympus, De Simeone et Anna 8 (PG 18:365B); 6 (PG 18:360C).
58 See Gedaliahu Stroumsa, “Polymorphie divine et transformations d’ un mythologème:
l’Apocryphon de Jean et ses sources,” VC 35 (1981): 412–434; Hugues Garcia, “L’enfant vieil-
lard, l’enfant aux cheveux blancs et le Christ polymorphe,” RHPR 80 (2000): 479–501; Paul
Foster, “Polymorphic Christology: Its Origins and Development in Early Christianity,” JTS
58 (2007): 66–99.
59 Gretchen Kraehling McKay, “Christ’s Polymorphism in Jerusalem, Taphou 14: An Exami-
nation of Text and Image,” Apocrypha 14 (2003): 177–191 at 185.
260 bucur
Paradoxically, Christian advocacy of the full divinity of Christ finds itself in

agreement with rabbinic polemics against “two-power” theology on this point:
for the rabbinic texts investigated by Segal, the one and same God is “the one
of the sea” (a young warrior) and “the one of Sinai” (the aged judge), the young
Beloved with curled locks, black as a raven (Song 5:11) and the white-haired
Ancient of Days; and the two thrones in Daniel’s visions are for the two aspects
of God, justice and mercy. For Christians, it is the one and same Christ who
is “the one Lord, both ancient and new,” as Romanos expresses it, both Son of
Man and Ancient of Days, newborn child and eternal God. As a matter of fact,
Stroumsa observed decades ago that “these rabbinic texts offer … a remarkable
parallel … to the conception according to which Christ appears under the form
of a youth and of an old man.”60
6 “One Power”: Christian Orthodoxy
The Christological polymorphism of the Byzantine hymns discussed above

seems to complicate the landscape by revealing more complexity and nuance
in the Christian theological “field.” It seems that the “Christophanic exegesis”
shared by all Church writers mentioned so far does not necessarily reveal a
“binitarian” or “two-power” theology.
In point of fact, fourth-century Trinitarian Orthodoxy emphatically rejects
the two-power or three-power doctrines of subordinationist Christology (“Ari-
anism”) or Pneumatology (“Pneumatomachianism”).61 Gregory of Nazianzus,
celebrated as “the Theologian” par excellence,62 offers the following criticism
of his Pneumatomachian adversaries:
They say: If you speak of “god” and “god” and “god,”—how is it that you
do not mean three gods? how are you not turning the object of worship
60 Stroumsa, “Polymorphie divine,” 421.

61 Alan Segal, “‘Two Powers in Heaven’ and Early Christian Trinitarian Thinking,” in Stephen
T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins, eds., The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Sympo-
sium on the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 73–95: “from the point of view
of the rabbis, all Christians seem to be ‘two powers’ sectarians; but from the point of view
of orthodoxy, only those who incline in the direction of Origen and Eusebius are” (94).
62 Gregory of Nazianzus’ homilies, the most copied of all Byzantine manuscripts after the
Scriptures, were recited on Sundays and feast days over the course of the liturgical year,
used in classroom exercises, and “plagiarized,” one might say, in poetic compositions
that eventually became the normative and generally received hymnography of Byzantine
Christianity.
into several principles (πολυαρχία)? … Here is how I answer them: how

is it that you label us tritheists—you who revere the Son (although you
have rejected the Spirit)? Are you then not ditheists? (τί φατε τοῖς τριθεί-
ταις ἡμῖν … ὑμεῖς δὲ οὐ διθεῖται)? … Now, if you [are among those who]
revere him … let us ask you: what argument is there in defense of your
ditheism, if ever you are accused of it? If there is a sensible argument—
by all means, make your answer and give us, too, a way to answer! For
whatever your arguments are in rejecting [the accusation of] ditheism,
those very arguments will be good enough for us against [the accusation
of] tritheism.63
The Pneumatomachian accusation—namely, that adding a third term to the

divinity amounts to “tritheism”—applies to their own addition of the Son to
the “one God” of Scripture; and they know full well that such a charge is refuted
by stating that the distinction of the hypostases does not preclude the funda-
mental oneness of the divinity. Nazianzen’s adversaries do, indeed, believe in
distinct “powers,” which happen to be two: their theology actually is ditheistic.
By contrast, Gregory’s own theology is not “tritheistic” according to the same
logic, since it does not count several powers but, as he states repeatedly, “the
one godhead and power.”64
The “ditheism” that Gregory of Nazianzus discerns in Pneumatomachian
theology corresponds to the rabbinic charge against those who worship “two
powers in heaven.” It should, therefore, not be surprising to find that the
“Christophanic” exegesis of Isaiah 63 and Daniel 7 proposes something else
than the expected “two power” theology.
63 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 31.13 (PG 36:148).

64 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 31.33 (PG 36:172): “… to worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the
one godhead and power (τὴν μίαν θεότητά τε καὶ δύναμιν)”; Or. 40.41 (PG 36:417): “This I give
to you as a companion and champion throughout your life: the one godhead and power
in the three (τὴν μίαν ἐν τοῖς τρισὶ θεότητά τε καὶ δύναμιν)”; Or. 1.7 (PG 35:401): the sound
faith in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the one godhead and power (τὴν μίαν
θεότητά τε καὶ δύναμιν); Or. 22.12 (PG 35:1144): “… the definition of piety, namely to worship,
in three—the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit—the one godhead and power (τὴν
μίαν ἐν τοῖς τρισὶ θεότητά τε καὶ δύναμιν).”
262 bucur
7 Concluding Observations
Navigating between the Scylla of “polemicamania”65 and the Charybdis of “par-

allelophobia,”66 scholars are increasingly adopting the view that Christianity
and rabbinic Judaism constitute “two sister religions that took shape in the
same period and with a common background of subjugation and destruc-
tion” (which explains “their agreement on the centrality of the messianic idea
and the centrality of Passover”), and that “these two religions did not emerge
as two separate entities with clear identities.”67 If, in manner reminiscent of
Boyarin,68 we envisage a theological continuum in a process similar to that
of mitosis, with internal polemics leading to the gradual emergence and self-
identification of two distinct religious bodies, it is not surprising to find that,
even after the internal polemics have become polemics between external rivals,
the two religious bodies have reconstituted distinct but analogous versions of
the theological vocabulary and syntax inherited from the common matrix.69
To put it plainly, the Church and the Synagogue think and pray in analogous
ways.
65 “A problem with Yuval’s work,” writes Kulp (“Origins of the Seder and Haggadah,” 124),
“is that once he starts looking for polemics, he finds them nearly everywhere. Instead of
Sandmel’s famed ‘parallelomania’ we encounter ‘polemicamania.’” This criticism is prob-
ably excessive, although Yuval’s argument that the similarity in sound between afikoman
in m. Pesahim 10.8 (“one may not add an afikoman [‫ ]ֲאִפיקוָֹמן‬after the Pesah sacrifice”)
and ἀφικάμενον in Peri Pascha 66 (Jesus “having come [ἀφικάμενον] from heaven to earth
…”) suggests that the Sages intended “to pull out the rug from under the Christian inter-
pretation” (Two Nations in Your Womb, 76) is as conjectural as Werner’s opposite claim
that Melito wrote ἀφικάμενον because he “wanted to mimic” the Passover rule about the
afikoman (“Melito of Sardes, the First Poet of Deicide,” 205).
66 Israel Yacob Yuval, “Christianity in the Talmud: Parallelomania or Parallelophobia?,” in
Franklin T. Harkins, ed., Transforming Relations: Essays on Jews and Christians Through-
out History in Honor of Michael A. Signer (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
2010), 50–74.
67 Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 69–70.
68 E.g., Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 8–9: “If one were to travel from Paris to
Florence speaking only the local dialect in each town or village, one would not know when
one had passed from France to Italy … The reason that we speak of French and Italian as
separate language is precisely because the dialect of Paris and the dialect of Florence have
been canonized as the national languages.” By analogy, “one could travel, metaphorically,
from rabbinic Jew to Christian along a continuum where one hardly would know where
one stopped and the other began.”
69 I find mitosis to be a helpful metaphor because it describes the process of division rather
than its result, and because mitosis results in two daughter cells each having the same
number and kind of chromosomes as the parent nucleus.
The Christian and rabbinic exegesis of Isaiah 63 and Daniel 7, as expressed

in their exegetical wrestling with Scripture, in doctrinal statements, and litur-
gical compositions, shows interesting points of convergence: both reject the
notion that the “saving” would have been carried out by an angelic or prophetic
intermediary, insisting, rather, on the exclusive work of the Lord; both view Isa-
iah 63 as one of many theophanies, in which, at diverse times and in diverse
manners, the same Lord spoke to the patriarchs and prophets, and to the peo-
ple of the covenant; and both articulate the “correct” view by appealing to the
theological device scholars call “polymorphism.”70 Even the “Christophanic”
exegesis of Isa 63:9 and Dan 7:13—which is normative orthodoxy for the Church
and unbearable heresy for the Synagogue71—does not negate the shared fun-
damental theo-logic of Christian and rabbinic discourse: unity and transcen-
dence of God, doubled by God’s relentless synkatabasis manifested in polymor-
phic theophanies that constitute the crucial articulators of the biblical story.
In the opening paragraphs of this essay I mentioned the theological mani-
festo of the Theophaneia School, penned by the group’s academic and spiritual
mentor. I see no better way to end this contribution than by quoting the final
paragraph of that same document:
To the world outside the Orthodox Church, especially to the scholarly

world, we offer our work as at once an apology—in the sense of an expla-
nation and a defense—for Orthodox theology and spirituality, and as
a labor in common with, first of all, our brothers and sisters in Chris-
tianity, who are also seeking out the origins of the Faith once received
by the Apostles; and, secondly, with Jewish scholars who are exploring
continuities with their own past; and to both we acknowledge ourselves
profoundly indebted. They have helped us, and they continue to help us dis-
cover ourselves. We hope in our turn to return the favor.72
70 Pesce (Dio senza mediatori, 169–182) insists on the fact that the Jewish texts rejecting medi-
atorship (the rabbinic midrashim and the later Haggadah) do not depend on the text of
Isa 63:9 (LXX), and argues that both are likely representing a single exegetical and theo-
logical tradition at least as ancient as the LXX itself.
71 Indeed, as Golitzin does not fail to remind us, “[t]heophany permeates Orthodox Tradition
throughout, informing its dogmatic theology and its liturgy. That Jesus, Mary’s son, is the
very One who appeared to Moses and the prophets—this is the consistent witness of the
ante-Nicene Fathers, and remains foundational throughout the fourth century Trinitarian
controversies and the later Christological disputes” (Golitzin, “Theophaneia,” xviii).
72 Golitzin, “Theophaneia,” xviii–xx (emphasis added).
part 4
Pseudo-Dionysius, Plato, and Proclus
∵
chapter 14
Revisiting the Christian Platonism of

Pseudo-Dionysius
István Perczel
1 On the Need of Studying Proclus for Understanding Dionysian

Christianity
In this study that I offer as a celebratory piece to Alexander Golitzin, I intend

to address an age-old problem and try to give a technical solution to it: namely
the question of whether the Pseudo-Dionysian Corpus is of Christian or of Pla-
tonist philosophical inspiration. Perhaps nobody has done as much as Vladika
Alexander to uncover the Christian sources and inspiration of the Corpus. His
monumental work was summarised in his recent monograph, Mystagogy: A
Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita, published in 2013.1 Yet, what made
the deepest influence on me was the original version of this monograph, Et
introibo ad altare dei: The Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagita, with Special Refer-
ence to its Predecessors in the Eastern Christian Tradition,2 which was published
in 1994, but which I encountered in its first form as a doctoral dissertation in
the Leuven theological library as far back as 1992, and which I devoured eagerly.
In this double monograph, Alexander Golitzin has dug deep into the Christian
spiritual tradition to show the patristic and Christian spiritual antecedents of
the Corpus.
In the two very different introductions to the two volumes, he briefly sur-
veys the literature, presenting the great debate that started perhaps with Luther
(“Stay away from that Dionysius, whoever he was!”)3 and gained momentum
1 Alexander Golitzin, Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita, CS 250 (Col-

legeville, Minn.: Cistercian Publications, 2013). As I am using an e-book, I am giving the page
numbers according to the electronic version, which do not match with the page numbers of
the printed version.
2 Alexander Golitzin, Et introibo ad altare Dei: The Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagita, with
Special Reference to Its Predecessors in the Eastern Christian Tradition, Analekta Vlatadon 59
(Thessaloniki: Patriarchal Institute of Patristic Studies, 1994).
3 Joachim Knaake, ed., Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesammtausgabe, vol. 6 (Weimar: Her-
mann Böhlau, 1888), 6:562, cited in Golitzin’s Mystagogy, Introduction, 17–18.

268 perczel
with the discovery of the transtextual reutilization by Pseudo-Dionysius of Pro-

clus’ work—not only his vocabulary, but entire long chunks of text from the
Diadochus’ oeuvre—by Joseph Stiglmayr and Hugo Koch.4 This literature, up
to the present day, is haunted by the perplexing question: how can an author,
whose work has been organically integrated into the development of Chris-
tian theology and who, up to modern times, enjoyed the reputation of being
an orthodox Christian teacher, be so deeply influenced by pagan Neoplaton-
ism? And conversely, how can an author, so deeply immersed in Neoplatonist
philosophy, still be considered a Christian? Yet, the great importance of the dis-
covery by Stiglmayr and Koch notwithstanding, Dionysian studies can hardly
escape the plague of specialization: experts in patristic studies will easily recog-
nise the patristic, even scriptural, background of the Corpus, while experts in
Neoplatonist philosophy will unmistakably rank it among the works of the
philosophers. This dichotomy is further aggravated by the temptation of two
extremes. Pseudo-Dionysius is either considered as an orthodox authority, or,
as E.R. Dodds has emblematically formulated it, someone who merely dressed
Proclus’ “philosophy in Christian draperies.”5
Researchers feel ever more the need of a synthesis. This is the program
that Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi formulated in his most recent learned and use-
ful monograph:
Our tentative objective will be to balance the diverse acquisitions of the

research in the perspective to arrive at a reading paradigm that is capable
to explain how it is possible that in the Corpus Dionysiacum are combined
the undeniable Neoplatonist formation of its author with its similarly
undeniable Christian orthodoxy.6
4 Josef Stiglmayr, “Der neuplatoniker Proclus als Vorlage des sogenannten Dionysius Areopagita
in der Lehre vom Übel,”Historisches Jahrbuch 16 (1895), 253–273, 721–748; Hugo Koch, “Proklus
als Quelle des Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita in der Lehre vom Bösen,” Philologus 54 (1895),
438–444; idem, Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita in seinen Beziehungen zum Neuplatonismus und
Mysterienwesen (Mainz: Kirchheim, 1900). However, at least Pseudo-Dionysius’s dependence
on the Neoplatonist school was already suggested by Johann Georg Veit Engelhardt, Die
angeblichen Schriften des Areopagiten Dionysius übersetzt und mit Abhandlungen begleitet
(Sulzbach: Seidel Kunst und Buchhandlung, 1823), xi–xii. I owe the reference to Engelhardt
to Ben Schomakers.
5 Eric Robertson Dodds, ed., Proclus, The Elements of Theology. A Revised Text with Translation,
Introduction and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), xxvi.
6 Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi, Dietro ‘Dionigi l’Areopagita’: La genesi e gli scopi del Corpus Dionysi-
acum (Roma: Città Nuova Editrice, 2018), 28–29.
revisiting the christian platonism of pseudo-dionysius 269
Yet, orthodoxy is a historically elusive category, so that one might immedi-

ately ask, “Which Christian orthodoxy?” as fighting factions within Christianity
always stressed their own orthodoxy and the heterodoxy of their opponents.
Thus, I would reformulate Mainoldi’s program in a looser form: we should arrive
at a perspective that is capable to explain how this author combines his undeni-
able Neoplatonist formation to his similarly undeniable Christian inspiration,
leaving the historically irrelevant question of orthodoxy to theological discus-
sions.
Now, it occurs to me that the debate on Dionysian Neoplatonism versus
Christianity cannot be solved by multiplying either the Neoplatonist or the
Christian references. Given the indebtedness of the author to Neoplatonist phi-
losophy, and especially to Proclus, one should give account for what precisely
he did with his Neoplatonist sources. And for this, we need a close parallel
reading of Proclus’ and Dionysius’ texts, something that the protagonists of a
Christian, or patristic, Dionysius rarely do. So, in the following, I will attempt to
shed a sharper light on Pseudo-Dionysius’ Christian inspiration through find-
ing more Proclus in his writings than scholarship has ever been able to find.
I will propose the paradox that the more we understand the thoroughgoing
dependence of this author on Proclus, the clearer picture we get of his deeply
thought-through Christianity. By doing so, I hope to add my small contribution
to Vladika Golitzin’s efforts to discover the Christian (Pseudo-)Dionysius.
I will not deal here with the popular proposal that Dionysius would be
dependent also on Damascius.7 This hypothesis is based on undeniable similar-
7 On Damascian parallels in the CDA, see L.H. Grondijs, “Sur la terminologie dionysienne,”
Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé 4/18 (1959): 438–447; Ronald Hathaway, Hierarchy
and the Definition of Order in the Letters of PseudoDionysius: A Study in the Form and mean-
ing of the Pseudo-Dionysian Writings (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), 17–30; Salvatore
Lilla, “Pseudo-Denys l’Aréopagite, Porphyre et Damascius,” in Ysabel de Andia, ed., Denys
l’Aréopagite et sa postérité en Orient et en Occident. Actes du Colloque International; Paris, 21–
24 septembre 1994, Collection des Études Augustiniennes. Série Antiquité, 151 (Paris: Études
Augustiniennes, 1997), 117–152 at 135–152. Based on these parallels, far-reaching theories have
been elaborated on the dependence of the CDA on Damascius’ De principiis, the most rad-
ical being that of Carlo Maria Mazzucchi in “Damascio, autore del Corpus Dionysiacum,
e il dialogo Περὶ πολιτικῆς ἐπιστήμης,” Aevum 80/2 (2006): 299–334, according to whom,
after his demonstration, the burden of proof falls on those who want to claim that Pseudo-
Dionysius is not Damascius (ibid., 328). However, few are those today who accept Mazzucchi’s
hypothesis. It has been refuted, by Emiliano Fiori in his review in Adamantius 14 (2008):
670–673; by Tuomo Lankila in “The Corpus Areopagiticum as a Crypto-Pagan Project,” The
Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 5 (2011): 14–40 at 39; and by Giocchino Curiello,
“Pseudo-Dionysius and Damascius: An Impossible Identification,”Dionysius 31 (2013), 101–116.
See also the summary of this debate in Mainoldi, Dietro “Dionigi l’Areopagita,” 107–113. Yet,
270 perczel
ities between the two authors, which are being interpreted either as a depen-
dence of Pseudo-Dionysius on Damascius, or even as the identity of the two
authors, or as an interlinear debate that Pseudo-Dionysius might have con-
ducted with Damascius upon reading him. Yet, these parallels are not compa-
rable to the references to Proclus’ texts in the CDA. As far as I know, nobody
has found long texts of Damascius paraphrased by Pseudo-Dionysius, such as
those of Proclus. Moreover, it seems to me an unreflective dogmatic position
that, if there are similarities between a pagan philosophical text and a Christian
text, the latter must be derivative from the first and not vice versa, even when
the chronology is unfavourable to this supposition. By now, the consensus that
Pseudo-Dionysius had been a member of the inner circles in the Athenian Neo-
platonist school of philosophy, which Damascius headed before its closure in
September 529,8 is widely held.9 Now, if Pseudo-Dionysius and Damascius were
members of the same philosophy school, there is no objective reason why Dam-
ascius could not have read the work of his fellow-student, even if the latter was
the unproven hypothesis of the dependence of the CDA on Damascius’ texts reappears oft
and ever. See recently Tuomo Lankila, “A Crypto-Pagan Reading of the Figure of Hierotheus
and the ‘Dormition’ Passage in the Corpus Areopagiticum,” in David D. Butorac and Danielle
A. Layne, eds., Proclus and His Legacy (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 175–182 at 177–178, and
Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi, “The Transfiguration of Proclus’ Legacy: Pseudo-Dionysius and the
Late Neoplatonic School of Athens,” ibid., 199–217 at 210–217, accepted also by Adolf Martin
Ritter in Dionys von Areopag (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 155. In Dietro “Dionigi l’Are-
opagita,” 113–142, Mainoldi further develops his interpretation of the Dionysian Christian
Platonist synthesis as a reply to and criticism of Damascius’ anti-Christian metaphysics.
8 On the precise date and circumstances of Justinian’s edict on the closure of the Academy, see
Joëlle Beaucamp, “Le philosophe et le joueur. La date de la ‘fermeture de l’ École d’ Athènes,’”
Travaux et Mémoires 14 (2002): 21–35. See also idem, “L’enseignement à Athènes au VIe siècle:
droit ou science des astres?” in Henri Hugonnard-Roche, ed., L’ enseignement supérieur dans
les mondes antiques et médiévaux: aspects institutionnels, juridiques et pédagogiques; colloque
international de l’Institut des Traditions Textuelles, Fédération de Recherche 33 du CNRS, [Paris,
7–8 octobre 2005], Textes et Traditions 16 (Paris: Librairie philosophique Vrin, 2008), 201–218.
9 Perhaps the latest proof for the author of the CDA belonging to the Athenian school’s inner
circles is my discovery that the most important Proclian work for the construction of the CDA
is the Platonic Theology, in “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Platonic Theology,” in Alain-Philippe
Segonds et al., eds., Proclus et la Théologie Platonicienne. Actes du colloque international de
Louvain (13–16 mai 1998) en l’honneur de H.D. Saffrey et L.G. Westerink (Leuven and Paris: Leu-
ven University Press and Les Belles Lettres, 2000), 491–532. According to Henri Dominique
Saffrey and Leendert Gerrit Westerink, this work was only known to Proclus’ close pupils and
was published long after the death of Proclus, perhaps in the times of Simplicius, that is, not
before the last years of the Academy; however, it was not much used until the Byzantine Pro-
clus Renaissance in the eleventh century. See Henri Dominique Saffrey and Leendert Gerrit
Westerink, eds., Proclus, Théologie Platonicienne, livre I (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968), cl–clvi,
especially cliii. See on this, most recently, also E.S. Mainoldi, Dietro “Dionigi l’Areopagita,” 116.
a Christian Platonist, especially because all the evidence seems to show that
the CDA was written long before the generally accepted terminus ante quem,
528 CE.
Yet, we do not need this counter-hypothesis either. To my mind, the par-
allels hitherto found between the CDA and Damascius prove only that, after
Proclus, there was an Iamblichean turn in the school of Athens, or that, even
in his lifetime, there was an Iamblichian tendency within the school, the char-
acteristics of which are an enhanced stress on apophaticism, a return to the
Iamblichian concept of the Absolutely Ineffable and of the One as One-All,
and a rethinking of Proclus’ metaphysical realism in terms of language philos-
ophy. The CDA and Damascius’ work both belong to this trend. However, the
same trend is also observable in a Platonist writer who is earlier than Proclus,
namely Synesius of Cyrene, whom Pseudo-Dionysius has definitely read.10 Also,
if we observe metaphysical differences between the Pseudo-Dionysian and the
Damascian systems, one should not hastily conclude that they are necessarily
due to the authors’ respective Christian and pagan convictions. They may well
reflect intra-school debates about purely metaphysical questions.
Nevertheless, at this stage we should lay aside the question of the relation
between the CDA and Damascius, the aim of the present study being to anal-
yse the CDA’s undeniable dependence on Proclus’ texts. For this purpose, I will
draw on a previous finding of mine, which I presented to the scholarly public
first in the year 2000, in a volume dedicated to the completion of the edition
by Henri Dominique Saffrey and Leendert Gerrit Westerink of Proclus’ chef-
d’oeuvre, the Platonic Theology.11 There, I published a study deemed prelimi-
nary, showing that the most important work of Proclus for Pseudo-Dionysius
was precisely the Platonic Theology, an almost continuous paraphrase of which
constitutes, so to say, the warp of the texture of the Dionysian texts. It is into
this warp that the author weaves as weft threads references to and paraphrases
of other texts, be they philosophical or Christian theological, thus producing a
complex transtextual web. Yet, my preliminary analysis in that study had not
got farther than the investigation of how Pseudo-Dionysius had used the first
three chapters of Book I of the Platonic Theology, with sporadic references to
other chapters, and an Appendix establishing Dionysian correspondences to
the first seven chapters, without any analysis. My philological work, although
10 The relationship between Synesius, Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius is the subject of the
M.A. thesis of Dachi Pachulia, written at the Philosophy Department of Central European
University Budapest, and defended in June 2019.
11 István Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Platonic Theology.” In the following, I will be
using the abbreviation PT for the Platonic Theology.
272 perczel
generally positively received, has not triggered any continuation. Now, I intend
to go beyond the results of that study and extend my investigations to the first
three books of the PT.
I believe that the research presented in this essay demonstrates that the
study of the precise philosophical position of Dionysius, and of the Neopla-
tonist literary and intellectual influences that he had undergone, reveals for
us, more than anything, precisely his Christianity and his position in the the-
ological debates that were going on in the Church in the very period when
he composed his writings. What we should finally see is the structuralist posi-
tion of a Christian Platonist, who proposed a genuinely Christian metaphysical
interpretation of Plato’s works as an alternative to the pagan Neoplatonist inter-
pretation. In this, he was both preceded and followed by a long line of Christian
intellectuals whose orthodoxy was often doubted but without whom the intel-
lectual history of Christianity would be unimaginable.
2 Plaidoyer of a “Conspiracy Theorist”
In the introduction to Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita,

Alexander Golitzin dedicates a separate chapter to something that he considers
a particularly negative phenomenon in Dionysian scholarship, namely, some
“extravagant views” labelled as “conspiracy theories.”12 The three conspiracy
theorists targeted are Carlo Maria Mazzucchi, Rosemary Arthur and me. While
Mazzucchi is presented as one arguing for Damascius being the author of the
Corpus and trying to inject Neoplatonism as a virus into Christianity, and Rose-
mary Arthur as proposing an alchemist-magician Dionysius, I am presented as
one who wants to see in Pseudo-Dionysius
a cunning and deliberately deceptive heretic of the most extreme sort: a

crypto-Nestorian as well as a Protoctist/Tetradite Origenist, whom Leon-
tius of Byzantium knew very well and criticized severely (without naming
him, however, since Leontius was concealing his own [Isochrist] brand
of Origenism); Dionysius would have authored the anonymous De Trini-
tate (usually ascribed to Didymus), a work in which the polemic against
Arianism, when properly decoded, reveals a fierce critique of Cyrillian
Christology […] the text in DN III.2 describing, according to the scho-
liast, the apostles’ gathering at the funeral service for Mary Theotokos,
12 Golitzin, Mystagogy, 20ff.

would refer to a council in which Dionysius took part, “possibly the coun-
cil of Chalcedon”—and, again, “James” stands for the bishop of Jerusalem,
“Peter” for the Pope of Rome, etc.; the term “theology” is a coded refer-
ence to the teachings of Origen, Eusebius, and Evagrius, while “Trinity”
conceals a christological “triad” in the Origenistic-Evagrian tradition; con-
versely, christological affirmations are to be read as cryptic references to
the Trinity.13
I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to present my speech of defence

in this very volume that celebrates Vladika Alexander’s achievements. In fact,
the above statements—needing some correction—are fair enough, but the
conclusion that, per consequence, I am a conspiracy theorist who wants to
present Pseudo-Dionysius as “a cunning and deliberately deceptive heretic of
the most extreme sort,” is neither true nor fair.
What I have been interested in from the very outset of my research, which
I started in 1992 in Leuven under the mentorship of Carlos Steel, who should
be profusely thanked for this initial impetus, was to find the philological and
methodological clues for understanding this text, which is far from being easily
understandable. Seeing the contradictory interpretations that are influenced,
more often than not, by the interpreters’ a priori personal convictions, at a very
early stage I decided to discard any a priori concept about the author and his
teaching. The very incomprehensibility of the text, often combined with gram-
matical imprecision, also betraying serious textual corruptions, had convinced
me of the need of a decoding technique.
As I had learned that there was an early Syriac translation by Sergius of
Reshaina, datable to the early sixth century, while our earliest Greek man-
uscript (Paris BnF cod. Gr. 437) dates to the early ninth century, I thought
that no textual research into the Corpus could be done without studying this
early translation. It was for this reason that I began to learn Syriac and that
later I obtained, first from the Washington Library of Congress and, then,
directly from Mount Sinai, due to the kindness of Fr Justin, the librarian of
Saint Catherine’s monastery, copies of the unique manuscript containing this
translation, Sinaiticus syriacus 52. Finally, I was not disappointed in my expec-
tations: indeed, it has turned out that Sergius had been working on a bet-
ter, less corrupt text, even a different redaction.14 To see this, it is enough to
13 Ibid.
14 This claim was repeatedly challenged by Emiliano Fiori. See, first of all, his “Introduc-
tion” to the critical edition of DN, MT and the Epistles: Emiliano Fiori, ed., Dionigi Are-
opagita, Nomi divini, Teologia mistica, Epistole. La versione di Sergio di Rēšʿaynā (VI secolo),
274 perczel
read Sergius’s version of the Ecclesiastic Hierarchy, whose core importance

for understanding the Corpus was pointed out by Alexander Golitzin him-
self.15 The text that Sergius translated had been organised differently from
the presently known Greek. It consisted of eighteen chapters, instead of the
seven contained in the second redaction and often it had alternative readings;
sometimes half sentences had been left out from the original in the second
redaction. Moreover, even the chapters are overlapping the present-day chap-
ter limits, showing that the second redaction has split original chapters into
two. Some further proofs for this statement, based on the texts’ relationship to
those of Proclus, will also be proposed here below.
Moreover, hunting for the code of the Dionysian texts, I was reading both
the Neoplatonist and the Christian literature. As I deepened these studies, I
was finding ever more astonishing background texts, overwritten and reused
by Pseudo-Dionysius. As I saw that the Corpus, its Neoplatonist vocabulary
notwithstanding, was saturated by scriptural references, I thought that by iden-
tifying the exegetical traditions to which the author adhered, one would find
the milieu from which the work emanated. During this research, to my greatest
surprise, I found out that the author adhered to the Origenist exegetical tradi-
tion, on the one hand, and to Antiochian Christology, on the other. Nothing was
premeditated in this inquiry.
Now, here are the corrections to the above presentation of my work: the
term “crypto-Nestorian” is one that I might have used sometime, astonished as
I was by the heavy indebtedness of the author to Antiochian theology, mostly
Theodoret, but including Nestorius, too. Yet, by now I see this story in a much
more variegated light, taking into consideration the fierce imperial oppres-
sion of the Antiochian party after Ephesus. If the Antiochians wanted to sur-
vive, they had to go underground.16 Nevertheless, I have never written that
Pseudo-Dionysius had been a Protoctist/Tetradite Origenist. In fact, the Pro-
CSCO 656. Scriptores Syri 252 (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), xxxiii–xxxviii, subchapter titled
“L’ipotesi de Perczel: difficoltà derivanti dalla storia della tradizione greca.” Yet, Fiori’s edi-
tion, studies, and also our oral discussions, make it clear that he has less problem with the
“two-redaction theory” than with my explanation that the second redaction was made to
mitigate the CDA’s original ‘Origenism.’ That the Syriac has a different and often much bet-
ter text than the one witnessed by the Greek textual tradition would be difficult to deny.
I must admit that, due to many other duties, I have never given a systematic response to
Fiori’s criticisms. This will not be done in the present study either, but it will present some
additional arguments in favour of the “two-redaction theory.”
15 See, especially, Golitzin, Et introibo ad altare Dei, 231–232.
16 This was an unavoidable necessity after the edict of Theodosius II, promulgated in August
435. See Paul Krüger, ed., Corpus Iuris Civilis 11th ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1954), I.5.6, 51.
toctist/Isochrist schism within the Origenist movement can be dated to the

540s, although it must have had its roots in earlier debates, while I am dating
the composition of the Dionysian Corpus to the second half of the fifth cen-
tury, perhaps to the 470s or 480s. What I claimed, following David Evans,17 and
based on the writings of Leontius of Byzantium, was that Pseudo-Dionysius,
together with Theodore of Mopsuestia, was one of the authorities used by the
Protoctist Origenists. This, and not more, is what I claimed somewhat dubi-
tatively in a study published in the year 2000.18 Finally as to the “Origenism”
of the Corpus, provoking a series of rejections,19 this idea was introduced by
none other than Alexander Golitzin himself.20 Even recently, he adhered to his
original expression “Neoplatonised Origenism.”21 Besides my own philological
research pointing in this direction, it was precisely his study, read in 1992, which
had oriented me.
I think that, if anything, it is the methodological and philological inquiry
that has some worth in my research. The conclusions remain always debatable,
they are even less important than the methodology. It is this methodology that
I try to pursue in the present essay, too. I ask my readers, here as elsewhere,
not to reject the conclusions under the influence of a priori convictions before
attending to the methodology and its philological details.
17 David B. Evans, “Leontius of Byzantium and Dionysius the Areopagite,” Byzantine Stud-
ies/Études Byzantines 7 (1980): 1–34.
18 István Perczel, “Once Again on Dionysius the Areopagite and Leontius of Byzantium,” in
Tzotcho Boiadjiev, Georgi Kapriev, and Andreas Speer, eds., Die Dionysius-Rezeption im
Mittelalter: Internationales Kolloquium in Sofia vom 8. Bis 11. April 1999 unter der Schirm-
herrschaft der Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale (Turnhout:
Brepols, 2000), 41–85.
19 Notably, Karl Pinggéra and Emiliano Fiori have dedicated several studies to refute my
claims of the “Origenism” of the CDA. See Karl Pinggéra, “Die Bildwelt im ‘Buch des heiligen
Hierotheos’—Ein philosophischer Mythos?,” in Martin Tamcke, ed., Mystik—Metapher—
Bild: Beiträge des VII. Makarios-Symposiums, Göttingen 2007 (Göttingen: Universitätsver-
lag, 2008), 29–41; Emiliano Fiori, “Mélange eschatologique et ‘condition spirituelle’ de
l’intellect dans le corpus dionysiacum syriaque,” Parole de l’ Orient 35 (2010): 261–276 and
idem, “The Impossibility of the Apocatastasis in Dionysius the Areopagite,” in Sylwia
Kaczmarek et al., eds., Origeniana Decima: Origen as Writer (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 831–
844.
20 See the entire section on “The Desert Fathers and Evagrius of Pontus,” in Golitzin, Et
introibo ad altare Dei, 319–348.
21 Golitzin, Mystagogy, 270ff.
276 perczel
3 The Framework: Pseudo-Dionysius’ Writing Methods
Here I am proposing a summary, based on previous publications, for under-

standing Pseudo-Dionysius’ writing methods. This summary might be useful
for understanding the specific inquiries contained in the main body of this
essay.
1. The CDA is a kind of late antique fiction, a Joycean novel, so to speak.22 The
author operates at multiple layers, plays a kind of hide-and-seek game, operates
with transtextual wordplays and ambiguities, which can be understood only by
those who know the subtexts to which he refers. He does not define his con-
cepts and exegetical or philosophical principles, which should be guessed or
known from other sources. Also, he operates by doublets: what is insufficiently
expressed at one place gets its explanation from another place—this is a way
to hide the key of the meaning of the given passages. Moreover, the fiction, and
its “mystical” dimension, is enhanced by its incomplete structure: it presents
itself as if it were only the tip of an iceberg—the underwater part of the ice-
berg being constituted by works that have never been transmitted under the
pseudonym “Dionysius the Areopagite.” I believe that these missing works have
been written actually and transmitted under diverse, mostly fourth century,
pseudonyms. Some of them can be identified, a fact which greatly advances
the understanding of the Corpus. In particular, in two previous studies, I pub-
lished material which I believe to be proving beyond reasonable doubt that the
Pseudo-Didymian De trinitate found by G.B. Mingarelli in a unique manuscript
can be identified as the “lost” Theological Outlines mentioned eight times in
the CDA.23 This identification, if it ever gets accepted in scholarship, should
22 For the definition of the term “Joycean,” see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joycean. On the

Dionysian Corpus as a late antique fiction as well as the writing methods listed above, see,
more extensively, István Perczel “Dionysius the Areopagite,” in Ken Perry, ed., The Wiley-
Blackwell Companion to Patristics (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), 211–225. Recently, Ben
Schomakers has also proposed that we should consider the Corpus a novelistic fiction:
Ben Schomakers, “An Unknown Elements of Theology? On Proclus as the Model for the
Hierotheos in the Dionysian Corpus,” in David D. Butorac and Danielle A. Layne, eds., Pro-
clus and His Legacy (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 183–198. There should be no debate
about whose idea this is, as the two of us are continuing our discussions on the CDA since
1992, when our friendship began.
23 István Perczel, “Le pseudo-Denys, lecteur d’Origène,” in Wolfgang A. Bienert and Uwe Küh-
neweg, eds., Origeniana Septima. Origenes in den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhun-
derts (Leuven: Peeters, 1999), 673–710 at 690–701. Here, I analyzed the intertextual rela-
tionship between Divine Names II, 1 and De trinitate I. 18, 35–41 the first text referring to
the second as one contained in the Theological Outlines; in István Perczel, “The Pseudo-
Didymian De trinitate and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: A Preliminary Study,” Stu-
conclude the sterile debate about the question whether Pseudo-Dionysius was
a Christian or not, as the De trinitate consists in a string of exegetical glosses
on the Bible. In fact, the De trinitate/Theological Outlines contains Pseudo-
Dionysius’ interpretation of positive, dogmatic theology.
Thus, we can distinguish between the narrower Dionysian Corpus transmit-
ted under the Dionysian pseudonym (CDAn) and the wider Dionysian Corpus
(CDAw) containing also the identifiable extracorporeal writings (CDAe).24 The
incompleteness of the structure plays a great rôle in the construction of the
dia Patristica 58/6: Neoplatonism and Patristics (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), 83–108 at 95–108,
I analysed a similar but more complex intertextual relationship between Mystical The-
ology III, Divine Names IV, 19, Celestial Hierarchy I, 1 and X, 3, on the one hand, and,
on the other, De trinitate II, 6.8, 1–3, the latter being referred to in MT as belonging to
the Theological Outlines. There are six more mentions of the Theological Outlines in the
CDA, all of which can be identified as referring to concrete passages in the De trini-
tate. For a full list of the extracorporeal writings mentioned in the CDA, see Perczel
“The Pseudo-Didymian De trinitate and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: A Preliminary
Study,” 87–89.
24 However, here we face another Dionysian puzzle: at least three manuscripts containing
the Dionysian Corpus also contain a Neoplatonist ‘Hymn to God,’ (the famous Ὤ πάν-
των ἐπέκεινα hymn) as one of the works attributable to the great Dionysius. The hymn is
also transmitted in collections containing the poetic works of Gregory the Theologian, of
Nazianzus. Finally, Cardinal Bessarion attributed the hymn to Proclus. According to Mar-
tin Sicherl, “Ein neuplatonischer Hymnus unter den Gedichten Gregors von Nazianz,” in
John Duffy and John Peradotto, ed., Gonimos. Neoplatonic and Byzantine Studies presented
to L.G. Westerink at 75 (Buffalo: Arethusa, 1988), 61–83, the hymn cannot belong either to
Proclus, or to Gregory, and its textual transmission within the Dionysian Corpus is far bet-
ter than in the other transmission lines. Moreover, the words of the hymn are echoing
specific Pseudo-Dionysian doctrines and expressions. Thus, the most probable author is
the one who authored the Dionysian Corpus, and the hymn has been transmitted within
this Corpus, too. This attribution has divided scholarship. Werner Beierwaltes who had
accepted the Dionysian authorship has later changed his view. In a later article, Pietro
Podolak has also expressed his doubts, saying that the hymn remains unattributable. See
Pietro Podolak, “Un inno dello Ps. Dionigi l’Areopagita? Alcune osservazioni sul carme
I,1,29 attribuito a Gregorio di Nazianzo,” Auctores Nostri 5 (2007): 187–202. However, I
cannot accept two of Podolak’s arguments, namely that the hymn is already cited by Olym-
piodorus in 525, which would make this citation the earliest reference to the Dionysian
Corpus and that there is nothing specifically Christian in the hymn. On the one hand, 525
is not too early a date for the appearance of the Corpus. Admittedly, the first mentions
of the CDA can be found in the writings of Severus of Antioch, which are datable to the
period between 518 and 528 (see Paul Rorem and John C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis
and the Dionysian Corpus: Annotating the Areopagite [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998], 11–
15). On the other hand, the very fact that the hymn is addressed to the single God is quite
telling, most of all if one compares it to Proclus’ hymns to the pagan gods. Its vocabulary
is definitively Dionysian.
278 perczel
intracorporeal writings, too. Whatever structure the author builds up, he also
destroys in a subtle play.
2. The author’s pseudonym is an anagram of the author’s name, while the
pseudonyms of the protagonists, almost all taken from the New Testament, are
denoting concrete persons—some of them being the author’s contemporaries,
others important—often controversial—figures of the preceding Church his-
tory. Here is a list of those pseudonyms that I believe to have been able to
decipher:
2.a. The author’s fictional teacher, Hierotheus (also an author’s name—τοῦ
Ἱεροθέου): Theodoret of Cyrus (Θεοδωρίτου). This is also an anagram; however,
the identification is in no way based on the anagram but on that of the sources
of the Christological texts in the CDA. The scholarly consensus around the
opposite view notwithstanding, the identification of these sources leaves no
doubt about the Antiochian dyophysite convictions of Pseudo-Dionysius.
2.b. The author’s name Dionysius the Areopagite (Διονυσίου Ἀρεοπαγίτου):
Agapetus, bishop of Rhodes (Ἀγαπίτου Ῥοδίων νησίου)—an almost perfect ana-
gram. According to my reconstruction, Agapetus, who was the bishop of
Rhodes for sure between 457–474CE, while the date of the end of his episcopacy
is unknown, is identical to the deacon and then, priest Agapetus, a confiden-
tial of Theodoret of Cyrus, a chaplain of the Roman legions in Thrace, who
was carrying Theodoret’s letters to Constantinople between c. 440 and 448.25
The invention of the pseudonym as an anagram seems to be the first piece
invented for the fiction, on which the entire playful imagination depends. Once
the pseudonym was found, the idea to write a Christian philosophical persiflage
upon the model of Saint Paul’s speech at the Areios Pagos was naturally emerg-
ing.26 I must admit that I was hesitant to publish my deciphering for the name
Διονύσιος Ἀρεοπαγίτης. I knew that scholars would not be happy to accept it and
would not have dared to publish it, had I not been encouraged by my friend,
the Byzantinist Roger Scott. I was right in my expectations: the deciphering did
not receive any enthusiastic reception. Interesting are, from this point of view,
Tuomo Lankila’s remarks:
25 István Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the Pseudo-Dormition of the Holy
Virgin,” Le Muséon 125 (2012): 55–97 at 86–92.
26 See Christian Schäfer, Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite: An Introduction to the Struc-
ture and the Content of the Treatise On the Divine Names (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 163 ff.; Charles
M. Stang, “Dionysius, Paul and the Significance of the Pseudonym,” in Sarah Coakley
and Charles M. Stang, eds., Re-thinking Dionysius the Areopagite (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2009), 11–25.
Unfortunately, Perczel’s anagram-making instead of confirming his con-

clusion on identification seriously weakens in my mind his argument on
authorship, because it seems quite artificial and is an example of overkill
in interpretation. How should we comprehend this method? What if the
author’s name had been instead of Agapetus of Rhodes, for instance, Hip-
ponax of Sinope?27
I would respond to this saying that nothing depends on this anagram. The
essence of the method is to use the information that the author himself had
placed within his text. First, I observed that anagram-making is a favourite
method of Pseudo-Dionysius when dealing with his sources. For example, he
takes a text of Proclus, rearranges its elements, transcribes some of its expres-
sions, and comes up with a convincing new text, which sounds as if it had been
freshly invented. This is a kind of anagram-making. Second, through an anal-
ysis of the CDA’s sources, and especially those of the texts attributed to the
fictive Dionysius’ fictive teacher, Hierotheus, I had arrived at the conclusion
that Hierotheus is Theodoret of Cyrus.28 Thirdly, I had realized that Hierotheus
is quite a good anagram of Theodoret.29 At a moment, I began to think about
whether Dionysius the Areopagite could also be an anagram. Then, immedi-
ately I realized that the name could be invented as an anagram of the name
Agapetus of the island of Rhodes, a name I had never heard before. Then, I
looked for this putative Agapetus, and found out that there was indeed a bishop
of Rhodes called Agapetus, whose office time coincides with the dating I had
established for the CDA and that, if it can be supposed that this Agapetus, a
staunch Chalcedonian, is identical to the deacon and later priest Agapetus
who served as a kind of secretary and courier of Theodoret, then, whatever
can be known about this Agapetus fits the sparse biographical data that one
can establish about the author of the CDA. While the more serious analyses do
not depend on this identification, I find this a far better method for a poten-
tial identification than establishing an a priori hypothesis about the potential
famous historical persons behind the pseudonyms Hierotheus and Dionysius
27 Lankila, “A Crypto-Pagan Reading of the Figure of Hierotheus and the ‘Dormition’ Passage
in the Corpus Areopagiticum,” 177.
28 On Theodoret (and Nestorius) being the source of the CDA’s Christology, see István Perczel,
“Theodoret of Cyrrhus: The Main Source of Pseudo-Dionysius’ Christology?” in Markus
Vinzent, ed., Studia Patristica XCVI: Papers Presented at the Seventeenth International Con-
ference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford, 2015, vol. 22 (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 351–375.
29 On the anagram, see Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the Pseudo-Dormi-
tion of the Holy Virgin,” 85–86.
280 perczel
(Stieglmayr: Severus of Antioch; Mazzuchi: Isidore and Damascius; Lankila and

Ben Schomakers: Proclus and an unknown pupil of his; Lourié: John the Eunuch
and Peter the Iberian etc.) and trying to prove such hypotheses through more
or less artificial methods.
The Apostles: James, the Brother of God: Juvenal, the first patriarch of Jeru-
salem; “Peter, the Head and most venerable Majesty of the theologians”: Pope
Leo, John, exiled to Patmos: Nestorius;30 Bartholomew: Origen.31
Philosophers, protagonists of paganism: “Apollophanes the Sophist”: Pro-
clus;32 “Clement the Philosopher”: Porphyry.33
Negative figures, magicians: “Simon the Magician”: Jerome; “Elymas the
Magician”: Theophilus of Alexandria;34 “Demophilus the Monk”: the Monk
Theodosius, self-made Archbishop of Jerusalem.35
3. The novelistic events of the fiction, described as taking place in the Apos-
tolic times, are normally cryptic allusions to contemporary, or earlier, but
still fourth or fifth century events. Thus, according to my reconstruction, the
Pseudo-Dormition of the Holy Virgin in DN III. 2–3 is in fact a report on the
events at the Council of Chalcedon and, most of all, Theodoret’s restoration
to his episcopacy, as the members of Theodoret’s party saw it; so also, the
prophecy of Letter X about Saint John the Apostle’s return from his exile to
Asia and the victory of his theology is an interpretation of Chalcedon as the
victory of Antiochian theology and the vindication of Nestorius;36 the rebuke
of Demophilus the Monk for arrogating to himself the rank of a bishop based
on the claim that his bishop has committed a grave sin, reflects on the story
of the monk Theodosius, who revolted against Juvenal for signing the acts of
Chalcedon, which the miaphysites considered as an act of treason; the accu-
sations of the Magicians Simon and Elymas against the party of Dionysius
are the anti-Origenist writings of Jerome and Theophilus of Alexandria, writ-
ten during the first Origenist controversy, which find their due refutation in
the CDA.37 Finally, the interpretation of the solar eclipse at Christ’s crucifix-
30 On this, see Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the Pseudo-Dormition of the
Holy Virgin,” 76–81.
31 On this, see Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Platonic Theology,” 516–519.
32 On this, see Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Platonic Theology,” 527–530.
33 This statement needs detailed philological proof, which I intend to publish later.
34 On this, see István Perczel, “‘Théologiens’ et ‘magiciens’ dans le Corpus Dionysien,” Ada-
mantius 7 (2001): 54–75.
35 This, again, would need a detailed demonstration.
36 On these, see Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the Pseudo-Dormition of the
Holy Virgin.”
37 See Perczel, “‘Théologiens’ et ‘magiciens’ dans le Corpus Dionysien.”
ion is a puzzle of interpretation. However, the whole text of Letter VII consists
of ad hominem arguments to Proclus—called Apollophanes in the letter—
namely refuting his theory on the eternity of the perceptible world and arguing
for the possibility of divine intervention into the revolutions of the heavenly
spheres. Thus, the contemplation of the extraordinary solar eclipse at the Cru-
cifixion seems to be a cryptic reference to a Christian Platonist interpretation
of the eclipse mentioned in the gospels as the main proof of divine interven-
tion, being the prefiguration of the future reversal, according to the myth of
Plato’s Statesman 269c–274d, of the revolutions of the circles of the Identi-
cal and the Different at the Second Coming, when the heavenly luminaries
would rise in the West and set in the East, and when the human beings would
be born from the earth—meaning the Resurrection of the dead—and disap-
pear at the end of their lives, meaning the general Restoration (apocatasta-
sis).38
4. As mentioned above, it seems that the warp of the whole texture of the
Pseudo-Dionysian texts, including the extracorporeal writings such as the De
trinitate/Theological Outlines, is something like an almost continuous para-
phrase of Proclus’Platonic Theology. It is possible that there was a written para-
phrased text, which the author rearranged for the purposes of CDAw, but it is
also possible that he knew the Platonic Theology so well that when he was com-
posing his text he could always refer to the relevant passage in Proclus’ chef
d’oeuvre. Some features of the Corpus, namely the existence of such a contin-
uous paraphrase of Proclus’De malorum subsistentia in Chapter IV of the Divine
Names, indicate that the first variant is perfectly possible.
5. The author was weaving into the warp, as weft-threads, paraphrases of
other texts; these could be Proclian, other Neoplatonist, or Christian texts. Ref-
erences not only to the Bible but also to its exegetical traditions are omnipres-
ent in the CDA, while the entire De trinitate/Theological Outlines is built up in
the form of scriptural commentaries.
Writers from whose texts the weft-threads are spun (the main authors of
Dionysius’ library) include: A. Neoplatonists: Proclus, Plotinus, Iamblichus;
B. Christians: Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Evagrius, Didymus the Blind, Gre-
gory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius,
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Synesius of Cyrene.
6. Apparently, the next step was tailoring the tissue thus obtained upon the
following pattern: four Gospels plus nine Apostolic letters plus a tenth letter
38 This is the first time, that I am publishing this interpretation. On the Seventh Letter and
Proclus, see Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Platonic Theology,” 527–530.
282 perczel
addressed to “St. John the Evangelist,” corresponding to the Book of Revelations.

A puzzle remains: what about the Acts of the Apostles?
The “Gospels”: three “synoptic Gospels” treating the descent of the divine
Light into the world through three stages: 1. through the hierarchy of the divine
processions; 2. through the celestial hierarchy; 3. through the earthly hierar-
chy of the Church; 4. a “Johannine” Gospel treating the ascent of the soul up to
the divine Darkness, which is the Mystical Theology. Yet, the Ecclesiastic Hier-
archy, treating the last phase of the descent, is as much about the ascent to
God.
The nine Letters serve as a compendium of the whole Dionysian theology.
They constitute a Christian metaphysico-allegorical interpretation of the nine
hypotheses of the Parmenides of Plato, that is, the par excellence theological
text of the Neoplatonists. Their interpretation follows the way—with some
idiosyncratic deviations remaining within the same tradition—it was prac-
ticed in Proclus’ school.39
The tenth letter, corresponding to the Revelations of John, refers to an event
contemporary to Dionysius’ life. It is a cryptic vaticinium ex eventu. In my
interpretation, it foretells to “John,” the symbolical name of the person whom
the author considers the rightful holder of the see of Constantinople, namely
Nestorius, that his theology is to be victorious and that he would be reinstated
to the Asian land. As mentioned above, here again, the author is referring to
the Council of Chalcedon, which seems to be the crucial event of his life and
which he interpreted as a victory of Antiochian dyophysite theology. The letter
may also draw on the legend, spread both in Nestorian and miaphysite circles,
according to which Emperor Marcian wanted to recall Nestorius from his exile
in the Great Oasis and invite him to Chalcedon, a rehabilitation that was pre-
vented by Nestorius’ untimely death.40
7. We should give account for a puzzling fact as well: the first Syriac transla-
tion of CDAn by Sergius of Reshaina (d. 536) reveals an underlying Greek redac-
tion that is different in many respects from the one transmitted in the entire
Greek text tradition. Conspicuous is that elements of this putative redaction
underlying the Syriac go back to the same Proclian sources as the extant Greek
39 This is the hypothesis of Ronald Hathaway, put forward in Hierarchy and the Definition of
Order in the Letters of PseudoDionysius: A Study in the Form and meaning of the Pseudo-
Dionysian Writings (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969). I have elaborated upon Hath-
away’s hypothesis in “The Christology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: The Fourth
Letter in its Indirect and Direct Text Traditions,” Le Muséon 117 (2004): 409–446.
40 On this, see Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the Pseudo-Dormition of the
Holy Virgin,” 79–81.
version, but often independently of the latter, that is, they contain paraphrases
of or allusions to Proclus, often to the same passages as the standard version,
which are missing from the latter, and vice versa. I do not see any possible expla-
nation for this other than that we are dealing with two authorial versions, one
destined for interior circulation within the circles of the author—this was the
redaction translated by Sergius: CDAni—while the other was destined for wider
circulation: CDAne.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the latter version, which we
could call the vulgate text of the CDA, later underwent much textual corrup-
tion, but also interventions because of the theological importance of the text
which it had acquired through its quasi-apostolic authority. However, there is
one phenomenon which cannot be explained by the existence of two authorial
versions. While there are subtle differences in the other treatises, the Sergian
Syriac text of the Ecclesiastic Hierarchy radically differs from the Greek. Its
structure is different: it consists of a linear string of eighteen chapters, simi-
lar to those of the other three treatises, while EHGr is ordered according to
a rather artificial arrangement of an introductory chapter and six more chap-
ters, each treating one church service. The sentences of EHSyr are often longer,
important elements are missing from the Greek and the entire vocabulary of
the Syriac text is more contemplative than that of the Greek. Also, the connec-
tion of the Syriac version to Proclus’ text is more direct than that of the Greek.
To my mind, this indicates that the EHSyr reflects a first redaction, which was
heavily revised before the publication of the CDA.41
4 An Illustration of the Relationship between Proclus’ Works, the

Platonic Theology and the Dionysian Corpus
Perhaps nothing is as befitting to illustrate the way Pseudo-Dionysius used the

Platonic Theology for the warp of the texture of the CDA (point 4. above) as the
correspondence between the titles and chapter titles of the Platonic Theology
and the CDAw. In an earlier study I have established some preliminary facts.42 In
another one, I used the touchstone of the transtextual utilization of the Platonic
Theology as a partial method for establishing the “Pseudo-Dionysian” author-
41 See, for example, especially, “The Earliest Syriac Reception of Dionysius,” in Sarah Coakley
and Charles M. Stang, eds., Re-thinking Dionysius the Areopagite (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2009), 27–42.
42 Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Platonic Theology.”
284 perczel
ship of the Pseudo-Didymian De trinitate/Theological Outlines.43 In the second

study, I have shown that the author of the De trinitate used, in Book II 2/21–
22,6–2044 and Book III 37,45 a passage of Platonic Theology III. 2, the paraphrase
of which is directly continuing, precisely from where the paraphrase in the De
trinitate stops, in Divine Names V 6–7. This shows that the transtextual reuti-
lization of the Platonic Theology—a voluminous work after all—extends far
beyond the narrow Dionysian Corpus.
As a continuation to those studies, here I am giving two tables of the corre-
spondence between the titles of CDAw as derived from Proclus, and the chapter
titles of the PT and the CDAw. I think these tables show quite clearly the intricate
transtextual relation between Proclus—especially his Platonic Theology—and
Pseudo-Dionysius, as well as the validity of the “warp and weft” theory outlined
above (section 3, points 4–6), together with that of the two-redaction theory
(point 7). They also give a hint about the unity of CDAn and CDAw, the trans-
textual relation to the Platonic Theology running through both corpora as a red
thread. The first table shows how the titles of CDAw derive from Proclus. The
second table shows—be it only through selected excerpts—how the chapter
titles of CDAw—but also the contents of the chapters—derive from those of
the Platonic Theology.
4.1 Treatise Titles

The following table shows how four among the treatises mentioned in the CDA
derive their titles from Proclus:
Proclian titles Dionysian titles—Greek Dionysian titles—Syriac
Περὶ τῆς κατὰ Πλάτωνα θεολογίας Περὶ μυστικῆς θεολογίας πρὸς Τιμό- 爏‫ ܥ‬焏‫ܐܣ ܐܦܝܣܩܦ‬狏‫ܬ ܛܝܡ‬熏‫ܠ‬
θεον ‫܀‬.焏‫⟨ ܐܪܙܢܝ‬焏‫ܝ‬煿‫ ⟩ܐܠ‬焏‫ܡܡܠܠ‬
PT βίβλιον πρῶτον κθʹ. Περὶ τῶν θεί- Περὶ θείων ὀνομάτων 焏‫ܢܝ‬熏̈‫ ܟ‬爏‫ ܥ‬焏‫ܡܝ‬煟‫ܐ ܩ‬犯‫ܡ‬焏‫ܡ‬
ων ὀνομάτων καὶ τῆς ὀρθότητος αὐ- 焏‫ܝ‬煿̈‫ܐܠ‬
τῶν τῆς ἐν Κρατύλῳ παραδεδομένης.
Ὑποτυπώσεις ἀστρονομικαί Θεολογικαὶ ὑποτυπώσεις 焏‫ܝ‬煿‫ ܐܠ‬焏‫ ܡܡܠܠ‬爏‫ ܕܥ‬焏‫ܣ̈ܝܡ‬
43 Perczel, “The Pseudo-Didymian De trinitate and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: A Pre-

liminary Study,” 92–95.
44 Ingrid Seiler, ed., Didymus der Blinde, De trinitate, Buch 2, Kapitel 1–7, Beiträge zur Klassis-
chen Philologie 52 (Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, 1975), 28.
45 MPG 39, col. 976, 12–18.
(cont.)
Στοιχείωσις θεολογική (Στοιχειώσεις Ἱεροθέου Θεολογικαὶ στοιχειώσεις 煿‫ ܠ‬爯‫ܝ‬煟‫ ܕܥܒܝ‬焏‫ܐ ܕܫܪܒ‬狏‫ܡܥܠ‬

θεολογικαί M1 Petritsi)46 ‫ܘܬܐ‬狏‫ ܕܐܝ‬焏‫ ܡܡܠܠ‬爏‫ܥ‬
焏‫ܝ‬煿‫ ܐܠ‬焏‫ܐ ܕܡܡܠܠ‬狏‫ܡܥܠ‬
焏‫ܘܢ ܕܬܐܘܪܝ‬煿‫ ܟܠ‬焏‫ܟܠ‬熏̈‫ܣ‬

焏‫ܝ‬煿‫ ܐܠ‬焏‫ܕܡܡܠܠ‬
[Ὕμνοι] Ἱεροθέου τοῦ ἁγιοτάτου ἐκ τῶν ἐρω- ‫ܬܿܐܣ‬犯‫ ܐܝ‬焏‫ܝܫ‬煟‫ܗܝ ܕܩ‬熏‫ ܫܪܒ‬爯‫ܡ‬
τικῶν ὕμνων ‫ܐ‬狏‫ܿܗ ܕܪܚܼܡ‬狏‫ ܬ̈ܫܒܚ‬爏‫ܕܥ‬
On the Platonic Theology To Timothy, On the Mystical The- To Timothy, On the Mystical The-
ology ology
PT I, XXIX. On the divine names On the Divine Names On the Divine Names
and on their correctness as it has
been transmitted in the Cratylus
Outlines of Astronomy Theological Outlines Compositions on Theology
The Elements of Theology Theological Elements of Hiero- Introduction to the treatises that
theus Hierotheus has written about the
Discourse on the Substance (II.9,
133.14 = Fiori 22.8–9)
On the Introduction to theology

(II.9, 134.6 = Fiori 22.19)
46 Most of the Byzantine manuscripts of the Elements of Theology give the title in singular:
Στοιχείωσις θεολογική, except for the first, original hand of Marcianus 678, saec. xiii–xiv,
M1 according to Dodds’ sigla. However, in the Georgian translation of Ioanne Petritsi,
which—according to our joint research with Levan Gigineishvili—is based on a copy
that was independent of the Byzantine standard tradition known from all the Greek
manuscripts, the title is also in the plural. This is explicitly stated in Petritsi’s Introduction:
“Now, the title written upon the text says: The Theological Elements of Proclus Diadochus,
the Platonist Philosopher.” This perfectly corresponds to the title as transmitted by M1, and
also to the Dionysian persiflage, which only reverses the order of the words but keeps the
plural number, just like in the other cases of titles adapted from Proclus. These concordant
testimonies make it very probable that the original title of Proclus’ treatise was Στοιχειώ-
σεις θεολογικαί. This recognition makes Ben Schomakers’ subtle musings on the meaning
of Pseudo-Dionysius’ changing the singular to a plural superfluous (see Schomakers, “An
Unknown Elements of Theology?,” 196–197).
286 perczel
(cont.)
Notes on the Contemplation of

Theology (III.2, 139.18 = Fiori
26.17–18)
From the Erotic Hymns of the From the treatises On the Cel-
[Hymns] most holy Hierotheus ebrations of Love of the holy
Hierotheus
This table shows how Pseudo-Dionysius derived the titles of the treatises of
his works—both intracorporeal and extracorporeal—and also of the ones
attributed to his teacher Hierotheus—from Proclus. The title of the treatise
On the Mystical Theology is modeled upon the very title of Book 1 of the Pla-
tonic Theology, “Mystical” replacing the attribute “according to Plato”—a very
appropriate change as, in the entire Corpus, Pseudo-Dionysius replaces the Pla-
tonist teaching with that of Christianity, and even the Proclian role attributed
to Plato as a divine figure with that of Jesus. The title of the Divine Names is
apparently derived from that of the last chapter of Book I of the Platonic Theol-
ogy and could be also considered as a sub-title of the first book of the PT, which
treats the common names of the Proclian gods and is amply used in the Divine
Names. The title of the extracorporeal treatise Theological Outlines is modeled
upon that of the Outlines of Astronomy, while the concise introductory work of
‘Hierotheus,’ to which Pseudo-Dionysius refers three times in the Divine Names
(twice in II. 9 and once in III. 2), is derived from the concise introductory work
of Proclus summarising his teaching on the gods, most probably to indicate a
similarity of the capitular form (as Pseudo-Dionysius clearly tells us, speaking
about “chapters” [κεφάλεια: III.2, 139.22] and “concise definitions” [συνοπτικοὶ
ὅροι: ibid. 140.6–7]).
Finally, it is impossible to establish a clear correspondence between the orig-
inal title of Proclus’ hymns and Hierotheus’ Erotic Hymns as Proclus’ extant
seven hymns have not been transmitted to us in a corpus but only in an
anthology contained in 15th-century Italian manuscripts, so that we don’t know
whether there was a collective title given to them.47 Yet, the fact that Proclus
wrote an Elements of Theology and also hymns to deities is most probably at
47 Ernst Vogt, ed., Procli hymni: Accedunt hymnorum fragmenta, epigrammata, scholia,
fontium et locorum similium apparatus, indices (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1957).
the basis of the analogous presentation of Hierotheus by Pseudo-Dionysius,

who attributes to his teacher both a Theological Elements and Erotic Hymns
to God. However, it is noteworthy that the texts that Pseudo-Dionysius ‘cites’
from Hierotheus’ Erotic Hymns are in prose. From Proclus’ works, they resem-
ble most some passages from the Commentary on the Alcibiades,48 and from
Theodoret’s, there is a close resemblance with Theodoret’s treatise On Divine
Love (Περὶ θείας ἀγάπης), being the Epilogue of his History of the God-lovers
(Φιλόθεος ἱστορία).49
The tendency, observed here, to reuse Proclus’ titles for constructing the
titles of the Dionysian—and also Hierothean—treatises also shows that the
hasty inference from the coincidence between Elements of Theology (Proclus)
and Theological Elements (Hierotheus), that this would justify a Hierotheus
= Proclus equation, does not stand to reason.50 In fact, based on the same
logic, one could also propose that Dionysius is a pseudonym for Proclus. There
remains the likelihood that, at least for the CDAn, Proclus’ literary activity is the
model upon which the entire structure of the Dionysian fiction is built up.
4.2 Chapter Titles

The following table on the correspondence of the chapter structures between
the PT and the CDAw intends to give a taste of the way the transtextual uti-
lization of the Platonic Theology is meandering through the entire oeuvre of
Pseudo-Dionysius. I have added here only some of the relevant correspon-
dences from a longer list.
48 This has been established by Josef Stiglmayr in “Das Aufkommen der Pseudo-Diony-
sischen Schriften und ihr Eindringen in die christliche Literatur bis zum Lateranconcil
649. Ein zweiter Beitrag zur Dionysiusfrage,” in Jahresbericht des öffentlichen Privatgym-
nasiums an der Stella matutina zu Feldkirch. Veröffentlicht am Schlusse des Schuljahres
1894–1895 (Feldkirch: Sausberger, 1895), 32–34.
49 Pierre Canivet and Alice Leroy-Molinghen, eds., Théodoret de Cyr. L’histoire des moines de
Syrie, vol. 2, SC 257 (Paris: Cerf, 1979) 314.
50 For this hypothesis, see most recently, Lankila, “A Crypto-Pagan Reading of the Figure of
Hierotheus and the ‘Dormition’ Passage in the Corpus Areopagiticum” and Schomakers,
“An Unknown Elements of Theology?.”
288 perczel
Chapter titles in the Platonic Chapter titles in the Dionysian Chapter titles in the Dionysian
Theology Corpus—Greek (CDAw)51 Corpus—Syriac (CDAni)52
Βίβλιον πρῶτον53
αʹ. προοίμιον, ἐν ᾧ διώρισται τῆς DN. κεφάλαιον αʹ. τίς ὁ τοῦ λόγου 爏‫ܢ܆ ܥ‬熏‫ܘܡܝ‬犯‫ ܦ‬焏‫ܡܝ‬煟‫ ܩ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬DN
πραγματείας ὁ σκοπός, μετ’ εὐφη- σκοπὸς καὶ τίς ἡ περὶ θείων ὀνομά- 煿‫ ܕܝܠ‬煿‫ ܢܝܫ‬爏‫ ܘܥ‬焏‫ܝ‬煿‫ ܐܠ‬焏‫ܡܡܠܠ‬
μίας τῆς τε αὐτοῦ τοῦ Πλάτωνος των παράδοσις. ‫܀‬.‫ܐ‬犯‫ܡ‬焏‫ܕܡ‬
καὶ τῶν ἀπ’ αύτοῦ διαδεξαμένων
τὴν φιλοσοφίαν. EH· τί[ς] ἡ τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς 煿‫ ܕܝܠ‬焏‫ ܢܝܫ‬爏‫ ܥ‬.焏‫ ܕܐܪܒܥ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬EH
ἱεραρχίας παράδοσις καὶ τίς ὁ ταυ- ‫ܐ‬犯‫ ܡܿܫ‬焏‫ ܐܝܡܟ‬爯‫ ܘܕܡ‬.‫ܐ‬犯‫ܡ‬焏‫ܕܡ‬
τῆς σκοπός κεφ αʹ.54 ‫ܘܬܐ‬犯‫ܡ‬熏‫ܬ ܟ‬熏‫ ܕܪܝܫ‬焏‫ ܪܘܚܢܝ‬焏‫ܙܘܥ‬
‫܀‬.狏‫ܐܝ‬煿‫ ܐܠ‬爯‫ ܒ‬狏‫ܕܪܚܼܦ‬
βʹ. τίς ὁ τρόπος τῶν λόγων ἐν τῇ 牟‫ ܙܘܿܗܪܐ ܕܬܿܒ‬爏‫܆ ܥ‬焏‫ܡܝ‬煟‫ ܩ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬EH
προκειμένῃ πραγματείᾳ καὶ τίνα ‫ܥ‬熏ܼ‫ܬܐ܆ ܘܕܒܝܫ‬熏‫ ܒܢܟܦ‬焏‫ ܗܢ‬焏‫ܒ‬犯‫ܫ‬
προηγεῖσθαι δεῖ τῶν ἀκροασομέ- 爯‫܇ ܐܝܠܝ‬爯‫ܕܡܝ‬狏‫ ܿܡ‬爏‫ ܟ‬爯‫ܠ ܡ‬煿‫ܿܗܘ ܕܠ‬
νων παρασκευήν. ‫ܬ‬熏‫ܝܫ‬犯‫ ܒ‬狏‫ܼܝ‬焏‫ ܙܕܩ‬爯‫ܿܚܫܚܝ‬狏‫ܕܡ‬
‫܀‬.‫ܬܐ‬熏‫ܢ‬煿‫ܟ‬
51 All the data about the Greek CDA are taken from the Göttingen critical edition: Cor-
pus Dionysiacum I: Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De divinis nominibus, herausgegeben von
Beate Regina Suchla, PTS 33 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990) and Corpus Dionysiacum II:
Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De coelesti hierarchia–De ecclesiastica hierarchia–De mys-
tica theologia–Epistulae, herausgegeben von Günter Heil und Adolf Martin Ritter, PTS 36
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991).
52 As to Sergius of Reshayna’s translation of the Syriac CDA, for DN, MT and the Letters, I
have used Emiliano Fiori’s critical edition: Emiliano Fiori, ed., Dionigi Areopagita, Nomi
divini, Teologia mistica, Epistole. La versione di Sergio di Rēšʿaynā (VI secolo), CSCO 656.
Scriptores Syri 252 (Leuven: Peeters, 2014). The list of the chapter titles of DN is found
on pp. 3–4, and that of the chapter titles of MT, on p. 106. For the CH and the EH
I have used the digital copy of Sinaiticus syriacus 52, generously provided by Father
Justin, the Librarian of St Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. The list of the chap-
ter titles of CH can be found on fol. 50rv, while the list of the chapter titles of EH is on
fol. 80rv.
53 See the list of the chapter titles in Henri Dominique Saffrey and Leendert Gerrit Westerink,
eds., Proclus, Théologie Platonicienne, livre I (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968), 1–4.
54 This title can be found only in the unique manuscript Laurentianus cod. 202, saec. X.
(Fa).
(cont.)
Theology Corpus—Greek (CDAw) Corpus—Syriac (CDAni)
γʹ. τίς ὁ κατὰ Πλάτωνα θεολογικὸς MT. κεφάλαιον αʹ. τίς ὁ θεῖος γνό- ‫ܬ‬熏‫ܬܐ ܕܠ‬熏‫܆ ܨܠ‬焏‫ܡܝ‬煟‫ ܩ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬MT
καὶ πόθεν ἄρχεται καὶ μέχρι τίνων φος. 爯‫ ܐܝܠܝ‬爏‫ܗܪܐ ܕܥ‬熏‫ܘܬܐ܆ ܘܢ‬狏‫ܐܝ‬
ἄνεισιν ὑποστάσεων καὶ κατὰ τίνα 焏‫ ܟ̈ܝܢ‬爯‫ ܡ‬焏‫ ܘܐܝܟܢ‬.‫ܐܡܪܢ‬狏‫ܕܡ‬
τῆς ψυχῆς δύναμιν ἐνεργεῖ διαφε- ‫܇ ܙܕ ̈ܿܩ‬焏‫ܪܓܫܢ‬狏‫ ܘܡ‬焏‫ܝܢ‬熟‫̈ܚ‬狏ܿ ‫ܡ‬
ρόντως. ‫܀‬.爯‫ܝ‬熟‫ܚ‬狏‫ ܡ‬焏‫ ܕܠ‬爯‫ܬ ܗܠܝ‬熏‫ ܠ‬焏‫ܥܠ‬狏‫ܕܢ‬
煿ܿ‫ܝ‬狏‫ ܐܝ‬焏‫ܐ܆ ܕܡܢ‬狏‫ ܕܬܠ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬.EH

‫ܕܥ‬熏‫ ܡܿܫ‬焏‫ܘܬܐ· ܘܡܢ‬犯‫ܡ‬熏‫ܬ ܟ‬熏‫ܪܒ‬
焏‫ ܐܝܡܟ‬爯‫ܡܪܐ· ܘܡ‬熏‫ ܕܪܒ ܟ‬煿‫ܫܡ‬
55‫ܘܬܐ܆‬犯‫ܡ‬熏‫ܬܝ ܟ‬熏‫ ܪܒ‬煿ܿ‫ܝ‬狏‫ܐܝ‬
ܿ
.焏‫ܚ‬狏‫ܡ‬狏‫ ܡ‬焏‫ܝܟ‬焏‫ ܠ‬焏‫ܡ‬煟‫ܘܥ‬
δʹ. τρόποι θεολογικοὶ καθ’οὓς πάν- MT. κεφάλαιον βʹ. πῶς δεῖ ἑνοῦ- ‫ ܙܕܿܩ‬焏‫ ܕܿܐܝܟܢ‬.爯‫ ܕܬܪܝ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬MT
τας ὁ Πλάτων διατίθησι τὴν περὶ σθαι καὶ ὕμνους ἀνατιθέναι τῷ ‫ܐ‬狏‫ܘܗܝ ܥܠ‬狏‫ ܿܗܘ ܕܐܝ‬爟‫ ܥ‬煟‫ܚܝ‬狏‫ܕܢ‬
θεῶν διδασκαλίαν. πάντων αἰτίῳ καὶ ὑπὲρ πάντα. 煿‫ ܠ‬爟‫܇ ܘܢܿܣ‬爏‫ ܟ‬爯‫ ܡ‬爏‫ ܘܠܥ‬爏‫ܕܟ‬
‫܀‬.‫ܐ‬狏‫ܬܫ̈ܒܚ‬
εʹ. τίνες εἰσὶν οἱ διάλογοι ἀφ’ ὧν MT. κεφάλαιον γʹ. τίνες αἱ κατα- ‫ܘܗܝ‬狏‫ ܐܝ‬焏‫ܐ܆ ܕܿܐܝܢ‬狏‫ ܕܬܠ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬MT
μάλιστα ληπτέον τὴν Πλάτωνος φατικαὶ θεολογίαι, τίνες αἱ ἀποφα- 爏‫ ܥ‬焯‫ܟ‬犯‫ ܕܡ‬.焏‫ܝ‬煿‫ ܐܠ‬焏‫ܡܡܠܠ‬
θεολογίαν καὶ τίσι τάξεσι θεῶν τικαί. ‫܆‬犯‫ܐܡ‬狏‫ ܕܡ‬.焏‫ܘܬܐ ܿܗܘ ܡ‬狏‫ܐܝ‬
ἕκαστος τούτων ἡμᾶς ἐφίστησι. 爯‫ ܗܠܝ‬煿‫ܿܫ ܡܢ‬犯‫ܘܗܝ ܕܦ‬狏‫ ܐܝ‬焏‫ܘܿܐܝܢ‬
‫܀‬.‫ܐܡܪܢ‬狏‫ܕܡ‬
ςʹ–θʹ. DN. Κεφάλαιον βʹ. περὶ ἡνωμένης ‫ܬܐ‬熏‫ܝ‬煟‫ ܚ‬爏‫܆ ܥ‬爯‫ ܕܬܪܝ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬DN
καὶ διακεκριμένης θεολογίας καὶ 焏‫ܝ‬煿‫ ܐܠ‬焏‫ܬܐ ܕܡܡܠܠ‬熏‫ܫ‬犯‫ܘܡܦ‬
τίς ἡ θεῖα ἕνωσις καὶ διάκρισις. ‫ܬܐ‬熏‫ܝ‬煟‫ ܚ‬煿ܿ‫ܝ‬狏‫ܐ ܐܝ‬煟‫ܘܕܿܐܝ‬
‫܀‬.焏‫ܝ‬煿‫ܬܐ ܐܠ‬熏‫ܫ‬犯‫ܘܿܡܦ‬
ιʹ. τίνα καθορθοῦσιν οἱ περὶ τῶν ἐν DN. κεφάλαιον γʹ. τίς ἡ τῆς εὐχῆς 煿ܿ‫ ܚܝܠ‬熏‫ܐ܆ ܿܡܢ‬狏‫ ܕܬܠ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬DN
τοῖς οὖσιν ἀρχῶν εἶναι τὰς ὑποθέ- δύναμις καὶ περὶ τοῦ μακαρίου .‫ܬܘܣ‬犯‫ ܐܝ‬焏‫ܒܢ‬熏‫ ܛ‬爏‫ ܘܥ‬.‫ܬܐ‬熏‫ܕܨܠ‬
σεις τοῦ Παρμενίδου λέγοντες καὶ Ἱεροθέου καὶ περὶ εὐλαβείας καὶ ‫ܬܐ‬熏‫ܒܢ‬狏‫ ܡܟ‬爏‫ ܘܥ‬.‫ܬܐ‬熏‫ ܢܟܦ‬爏‫ܘܥ‬
τίνα προσθέτεον οἷς λέγουσιν ἐκ συγγραφῆς θεολογικῆς. ‫܀‬.焏‫ܝ‬煿‫ ܐܠ‬焏‫ܕܡܡܠܠ‬
τῆς αὐτοῦ τοῦ καθηγεμόνος ἡμῶν
παραδόσεως.
[…]
55 Sic! ‫ܘܬܐ‬犯‫ܡ‬熏‫ܬ ܟ‬熏‫ ܪܒ‬in the text.

290 perczel
(cont.)
ιηʹ. τἰς ⟨ἡ⟩ άγαθότης τῶν θεῶν καὶ DN. κεφάλαιον δʹ. περὶ ἀγαθοῦ, ‫ܗܪܐ‬熏‫ ܢ‬爏‫܆ ܥ‬焏‫ ܕܐܪܒܥ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬DN
πῶς αἴτιοι λέγονται πάντων ἀγα- φωτὸς, καλοῦ, ἔρωτος, έκστάσεως, ‫ܬܐ܆‬犯‫ܐ ܫܦܝ‬狏‫ ܪܼܚܡ‬爏‫ܬܐ ܘܥ‬熏‫ܕܛܒ‬
θῶν· ἐν ᾧ καὶ ὅτι τὸ κακὸν κατὰ ζήλου, καὶ ὅτι τὸ κακὸν οὔτε ὂν .焏‫ ܛܢܼܢ‬爏‫ ܘܥ‬.焏‫ܥ‬煟‫ ܕܡ‬煿‫ܘܩܝ‬熟‫ ܚ‬爏‫ܘܥ‬
παρυπόστασίν ἐστι κοσμούμενον οὔτε ἐξ ὄντος οὔτε ἐν τοῖς οὖσιν. 焏‫ܝ‬狏‫ ܐܝ‬焏‫ܐ ܠ‬狏‫ ܿܗܝ ܕܒܼܝܫ‬爏‫ܥ‬
καὶ αὐτὸ καὶ ταττόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν ‫ܘܗܝ‬狏‫ ܿܗܘ ܕܐܝ‬爯‫ ܡ‬焏‫܆ ܘܠ‬煿ܿ‫ܝ‬狏‫ܐܝ‬
θεῶν. DT/TO ΙΙ.6.8. ὅτι ⟨τὸ ἅγιον 爯‫ܝ‬煿‫ܝ‬狏‫ ܕܐܝ‬爯‫ܠܝ‬煿‫ ܒ‬焏‫ ܘܠ‬.‫ܗܘܬ‬
πνεῦμα⟩ ἀγαθὸν, αὐτότικτον ‫܀‬.煿ܿ‫ܝ‬狏‫ܐܝ‬
τὰς ἐν τῇ κτίσει ἀγαθότητας καὶ
ἀληθείας καὶ σοφίας καὶ ἀγά-
πας· καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ συνεπινοεῖται
πᾶσα δὀσις ἀγαθὴ καὶ πᾶν δώρημα
τέλειον.56
κʹ. τίς ἡ ἁπλότης τῶν θεῶν καὶ CH. κεφάλαιον αʹ. ὅτι πᾶσα θεία 爏‫ ܿܗܝ ܕܿܟ‬爏‫܆ ܥ‬焏‫ܡܝ‬煟‫ ܩ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬CH
πῶς τὸ ἁπλοῦν αὐτῶν ποικίλον ἐν ἔλλαμψις κατὰ ἀγαθότητα ποικί- 焿‫ܠ‬熟‫ܬܐ ܡ‬熏‫ ܕܒܛܒ‬焏‫ܝ‬煿‫ ܿܐܠ‬焏‫ܨܡܼܚ‬
ܿ
τοῖς δευτέροις φαντάζεται. λως εἰς τὰ προνοουμένα προιοῦσα 爯‫ܘܬܦܝ‬狏‫ܢ ܕܡܫ‬熏‫ ܿܗܢ‬爏‫ ܥ‬狏‫ܝ‬焏‫ܝܟ‬狏‫ܦ‬
μένει ἁπλῆ καὶ οὐ τοῦτο μόνον,
ܿ
.‫ܘܬܗ‬狏‫ ܒܦܫܝ‬煿ܿ‫ܪ ܼܗܘ ܒ‬狏‫܇ ܡܟ‬煿ܿ‫ܠ‬
ἀλλὰ καὶ ἑνοποιεῖ τὰ ἐλλαμπό- 焏‫ܕ܆ ܐܠ‬熏ܼ‫ ܗܘܐ ܗܕܐ ܒܠܚ‬焏‫ܘܠ‬
μενα. 焿‫ܠ‬熟‫ܢ ܕܿܡ‬熏‫ ܿܗܢ‬煿‫ ܥܡ‬煟‫ܐܦ ܿܡܚܝ‬
‫܀‬.‫ܘܢ‬煿‫ܥܠܝ‬
κθʹ. περὶ τῶν θείων ὀνομάτων καὶ DN. κεφάλαιον αʹ. τίς ὁ τοῦ λόγου 爏‫ܢ܆ ܥ‬熏‫ܘܡܝ‬犯‫ ܦ‬焏‫ܡܝ‬煟‫ ܩ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬DN
τῆς ὀρθότητος αὐτῶν τῆς ἐν Κρα- σκοπὸς καὶ τίς ἡ περὶ θείων ὀνομά- 煿‫ ܕܝܠ‬煿‫ ܢܝܫ‬爏‫ ܘܥ‬焏‫ܝ‬煿‫ ܐܠ‬焏‫ܡܡܠܠ‬
τύλῳ παραδεδομένης. των παράδοσις. ‫܀‬.‫ܐ‬犯‫ܡ‬焏‫ܕܡ‬
Βίβλιον δεύτερον57
[…]
βʹ. δεὐτερα ἔφοδος ἐκφαίνουσα MT. κεφάλαιον δʹ. ὅτι οὐδὲν τῶν 焏‫ ܿܗܝ ܕܠ‬爏‫܆ ܥ‬焏‫ ܕܥܪܒܥ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬MT
τὴν ἐξῃρημένην τοῦ ἑνὸς ὑπόστα- αἰσθητῶν ὁ παντὸς αἰσθητοῦ καθ’ 焏‫ܪܓܫܢ‬狏‫ ܡ‬焏‫ ܟ̈ܝܢ‬爯‫ܡ‬ ܿ ‫ܡ‬煟‫ ܡ‬狏‫ܐܝ‬
σιν ἀπὸ πασῶν οὐσιῶν σωματικῶν ὑπεροχὴν αἴτιος. 爏‫ܬܗ ܕܟ‬熏‫ܐ ܒܡܥܠܝ‬狏‫ܘܗܝ ܥܠ‬狏‫ܕܐܝ‬
καὶ ἀσωμάτων. ‫܀‬.犿‫ܪܓ‬狏‫ ܕܡ‬焏‫ܡ‬
MT. κεφάλαιον εʹ. ὅτι οὐδὲν τῶν 焏‫ ܿܗܝ ܕܠ‬爏‫܆ ܥ‬焏‫ ܕܚܡܫ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬MT
νοητῶν ὁ παντὸς νοητοῦ καθ’ ὑπε- 焏‫ܥܢ‬煟‫̈ܝ‬狏‫ ܡ‬焏‫ ܟ̈ܝܢ‬爯‫ܡ‬
ܿ ‫ܡ‬煟‫ ܡ‬狏‫ܐܝ‬
ροχὴν αἴτιος. 爏‫ܬܗ ܕܟ‬熏‫ܐ ܒܡܥܠܝ‬狏‫ܘܗܝ ܥܠ‬狏‫ܕܐܝ‬
‫܀‬.‫ܥ‬煟‫ܝ‬狏‫ ܕܡ‬焏‫ܡ‬
56 Seiler, Didymus der Blinde, De trinitate, Buch 2, Kapitel 1–7, 140.

57 See the list of the chapters’ titles in Henri Dominique Saffrey and Leendert Gerrit West-
erink, eds., Proclus, Théologie Platonicienne, livre II (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1974) 1–2.
(cont.)
ζʹ. τἰνα τὰ ἐν Πολιτείᾳ ῥηθέντα διὰ DN. κεφάλαιον δʹ. περὶ ἀγαθοῦ, ‫ܗܪܐ‬熏‫ ܢ‬爏‫܆ ܥ‬焏‫ ܕܐܪܒܥ‬焏‫ ܪܝܫ‬DN
τῆς πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον ἀναλογίας περὶ φωτὸς, καλοῦ, ἔρωτος, έκστάσεως, ‫ܬܐ܆‬犯‫ܐ ܫܦܝ‬狏‫ ܪܼܚܡ‬爏‫ܬܐ ܘܥ‬熏‫ܕܛܒ‬
τῆς πρωτῆς ἀρχῆς· ἐν οἷς λέγε- ζήλου, καὶ ὅτι τὸ κακὸν οὔτε ὂν .焏‫ ܛܢܼܢ‬爏‫ ܘܥ‬.焏‫ܥ‬煟‫ ܕܡ‬煿‫ܘܩܝ‬熟‫ ܚ‬爏‫ܘܥ‬
ται πῶς τἀγαθὸν ἀνυμνεῖται, πῶς οὔτε ἐξ ὄντος οὔτε ἐν τοῖς οὖσιν. 焏‫ܝ‬狏‫ ܐܝ‬焏‫ܐ ܠ‬狏‫ ܿܗܝ ܕܒܼܝܫ‬爏‫ܥ‬
φανότατον τοῦ ὄντος, πῶς ὁ ἥλιος ‫ܘܗܝ‬狏‫ ܿܗܘ ܕܐܝ‬爯‫ ܡ‬焏‫܆ ܘܠ‬煿ܿ‫ܝ‬狏‫ܐܝ‬
ἔκγονος τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, καὶ ὅτι καθ’ 爯‫ܝ‬煿‫ܝ‬狏‫ ܕܐܝ‬爯‫ܠܝ‬煿‫ ܒ‬焏‫ ܘܠ‬.‫ܗܘܬ‬
ἑκάστην τάξιν τῶν θείων ὑπέστη ‫܀‬.煿ܿ‫ܝ‬狏‫ܐܝ‬
μονὰς ἀνάλογος ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἀρχῇ,
καὶ πῶς πάντων ἐστὶν αἰτία τῶν
ὄντων πρὸ δυνάμεως οὖσα καὶ
ἐνεργείας.
[…]
Βιβλιον τρίτον58 ?/Ὑποτυπώσεις θεολογικαί
Book II59
αʹ. ὅτι μετὰ τὸν περὶ τῆς μίας κεφάλαιον αʹ. περὶ τοῦ τὴν ἁγίαν
ἀρχῆς λόγον κοινῇ πραγματεύ- Τριάδα ἀκατάληπτον εἶναι.
εσθαι χρὴ περὶ τῶν θείων τάξεων,
ὅσαι τέ εἰσι καὶ πῶς διαιροῦνται
ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων.
βʹ. ὄτι πλῆθος ἑνάδων μετὰ τὸ ἓν κεφάλαιον βʹ. περὶ τοῦ τὸ ἅγιον
ὑπέστη, καθ’ ἃς οἱ θεοὶ τὴν ὑπό- πνεῦμα εἶναι τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ περὶ
στασιν ἔχουσιν. αἰρετικῆς ἀντιθέσεως.
Book I.
1. Preface, in which the aim of DN. Chapter I. What is the aim DN. Chapter I: Preface. On theology
the treatise is defined, with of the discourse and what is the and on the aim of the treatise.
praise of Plato himself and of tradition on the divine names?
those who have received the EH. Chapter IV. On the aim of the trea-
philosophy from him. EH. What is the tradition of the tise and on the question of where the
Ecclesiastic hierarchy and what spiritual motion of the high priest-
is its aim? Chapter I. hood that divinely brooded in us,
starts.
58 See the list of the chapter titles in Henri Dominique Saffrey and Leendert Gerrit Westerink,
eds., Proclus, Théologie Platonicienne, livre III (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1978) 1–4.
59 Seiler, Didymus der Blinde, De trinitate, Buch 2, Kapitel 1–7, 28.
292 perczel
(cont.)
2. What is the way of proceed- EH. Chapter I. On the admonition that

ing of the discourses in the this treatise needs piety60 and that
present treatise, and what kind to Jesus who is beyond all things are
of preparation is needed on the likened those who use the ecclesiastic
part of those who listen to it? hierarchy in the right way.
3. Who is the Platonic theolo- MT. Chapter I. What is the MT. Chapter I. Prayer to the Sub-
gian, where he starts, to which divine obscurity? stance/Existence and an explanation
hypostases he ascends, and on those that will be said, and on the
which is the power of the soul question, how one should ascend from
according to which he acts par- the visible and perceptible natures to
ticularly? those invisible.
EH. Chapter III. What is the high-

priesthood and what is the meaning
of the name of the high-priest, and
wherefrom is the high-priesthood and
whereto it ascends?
4. Theological methods, accord- MT. Chapter II. How to become MT. Chapter II. How to become united
ing to all of which Plato orders united and to offer hymns to to the one Who is the Cause of all and
the teaching about the gods. the one Who is the Cause of all above all things and to offer Him glori-
and Who is above all things. fications?
5. Which are the dialogues, from MT. Chapter III. Which are MT. Chapter III. Which is the theology
which it is mostly possible to the affirmative theologies and that composes concerning the Exis-
derive Plato’s theology and to which are the negative ones. tence/Substance that which is said
which orders does each of these and which is that, which separates
lead us. from it that which is said.
6–9. DN. Chapter II. On the unified DN. Chapter II. On the union and the
and distinguished theology and distinction of theology and on what
on what the divine union and the divine union and distinction is.
distinction is.
60 The original of the Syriac ‫ܬܐ‬熏‫ ܢܟܦ‬must be εὐλάβεια.

(cont.)
10. What do accomplish those DN. Chapter III. What is the DN. Chapter III. What is the power
who say that the hypotheses of power of the prayer, and on the of the prayer, and on the blessed
the Parmenides are about the blessed Hierotheus, on piety Hierotheus, on piety and the theo-
principles among the beings and the theological writing. logical writing.
and what should be added to
what they say from the very
tradition of our teacher?
[…]
18. What is the goodness of the DN. Chapter IV. On the Good, DN. Chapter IV. On the Light of the
gods and how they are said the Light, the Beautiful, the Good, on the beautiful Love, on the
to be the causes of all good Love, ecstasy, zeal, and on departure of the mind, on zeal, and
things? In which, on that evil that evil is neither being, nor on that evil is not being, and was not
is ornated according to a par- from the being, nor among the from that which is, and is not among
asite subsistence and that it is beings. those that are.
also subordinated to the gods.
DT/TO ΙΙ.6.8. On the subject that
⟨the Holy Spirit⟩ is good, itself
giving birth to the goodnesses,
truths, wisdoms and loves; and
that in its concept is conceived
“all good gift and all perfect
donation.”
[…]
20. What is the simplicity of the CH. Chapter I. That all divine CH. Chapter I. On that all divine splen-
gods and how is it that their illumination proceeding in a dour that is shining forth in a varie-
simplicity is appearing varie- variegated way to those that gated way upon those that participate
gated in the secondary entities. are the objects of providence, in it, remains in its own simplicity, and
remains simple, and not only not only this, but it also unites with
this, but it also unites those itself those whom it illuminates.
whom it illuminates.
29. On the divine names and on DN. Chapter I. What is the aim DN. Chapter I: Introduction. On theol-
their correctness as it has been of the discourse and what is the ogy and on the aim of the treatise.
transmitted in the Cratylus tradition on the divine names?
294 perczel
(cont.)
Book II.
[…]
2. Second approach, which MT. Chapter IV. That the one MT. Chapter IV. That the one That in
shows that the hypostasis of That is supereminently the its elevation is the Cause of all that are
the One is transcendent to all Cause of all the perceptible perceived, is not one from among the
the corporeal and incorporeal things is none from among the perceptible natures.
substances. perceptible things.
MT. Chapter V. That the one MT. Chapter V. That the one That in
That is supereminently the its elevation is the Cause of all that
Cause of all the intelligible are known, is not one from among the
things is none from among the intelligible things.
intelligible things.
[…]
7. What are those that were said DN. Chapter IV. On the Good, DN. Chapter IV. On the Light of the
in the Republic through the the Light, the Beautiful, the Good, on the beautiful Love, on the
analogy with the Sun about the Love, ecstasy, zeal, and on departure of the mind, on zeal, and
First Principle? There, it is also that evil is neither being, nor on that evil is not being, and was not
said how it is celebrated as the from the being, nor among the from that which is, and is not among
Good, how it is more luminous beings. those that are.
than being, how is the Sun a
progeny of the Good and on the
subject that in every order of
the divine beings their came to
be a monad that is analogous
to that Principle and on how it
is the Cause of all the beings,
while it is before potentiality
and act.
De trinitate/Theological Outlines
Book III. Book II.
1. On that after the discourse on Chapter I. On that the holy

the one Principle, one should Trinity is incomprehensible.
treat in general the divine
orders, how many they are and
how they are distinguished
from each other.
(cont.)
2. On that after the One a mul- Chapter II. On that there is the
tiplicity of henads came about, Holy Spirit of God and on a
according to which the gods heretical counterargument.
receive their subsistence.
In the above table, I included only 13 chapters from Book I of the Platonic The-
ology and 2–2 chapters from Books II and III to illustrate how the presence of
the Platonic Theology runs through the Greek CDA, the putative original of the
Syriac translation, and the De trinitate/Theological Outlines. However, this is a
greatly simplified picture, the real relationship being much more complicated.
Often, the Dionysian titles and chapter contents draw from several chapter
titles and contents in the PT, while one chapter in the PT may be used in several
Dionysian ones.
The correspondences between the chapter titles are sometimes obvious,
and sometimes less manifest. However, even when they are not obvious, the
correspondence of the contents of the chapters reinforces the transtextual rela-
tionship. This relationship also shows that the chapter titles are integral part of
both the Platonic Theology and the Dionysian writings and that the latter are
not secondary text-parts as Bernhard Brons had argued, an argument accepted
by the editors of the Göttingen critical edition, who have relegated the titles to
the apparatus criticus.61
5 Analysis of the Correspondences between the Platonic Theology

and the Wider Dionysian Corpus
PT I.1 treats the “aim” (σκοπός) of the entire treatise, which is reflected both in
the title of the first chapter of DN and that of the EH in the Greek tradition,
which is, however, preserved by only one manuscript. Yet, only the Syriac of
61 See Bernhard Brons, Sekundäre Textpartien im Corpus Pseudo-Dionysiacum? Literarkri-

tische Beobachtungen zu ausgewählten Textstellen. Nachrichten der Akademie der Wis-
senschaften von Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 1975, 5 (Göttingen: Vanden-
hoeck & Ruprecht, 1975).
296 perczel
DN I reflects the subtitle of the PT chapter: “Preface” (προοίμιον: ‫ܢ‬熏‫ܘܡܝ‬犯‫)ܦ‬. As

mentioned above, the structure and the chapter titles of the EH are radically dif-
ferent in the Greek vulgate version and in Sergius’ Syriac translation, the latter
consisting of eighteen chapters, while the vulgate text consists in seven. Quite
significantly, the first chapters of the Syriac EH (EHSyr) have a direct relation-
ship to those of the PT, which is a further proof of the two-redaction theory
summarised above in section 3 under point 7. In other words, it would be a
rather improbable hypothesis to suppose that the differences between EHGr
and EHSyr were due to the fact that Sergius, the Syriac translator, first divided
the seven chapters of EHGr into eighteen and then consulted the chapter titles
of the Platonic Theology precisely at those chapters from where the text of the
Greek text was derived, to create new Proclian-sounding chapter titles. Rather,
this phenomenon indicates that Sergius had the original Greek redaction in
hand, which was rearranged in an artificial manner in the Greek EH text. With
this rearrangement, the connection of the chapter titles to the original titles
of the PT was lost, only one manuscript, Laurentianus cod. 202 (Fa) preserving
a chapter title similar to the Syriac, and thus, to the PT. Chapter IV of EHSyr,
corresponding to the Greek text of p. 68.16–69.19 in Heil’s edition, also bears
a similar title and refers to the “aim” of the treatise, while it also draws on
PT. I.3. when asking about the starting point and the end of the ascent of the
Platonic theologian transformed here into the faithful divinized through the
“high-priesthood,” which is the original meaning of hierarchia, and is translated
so in the Syriac.
The title and the content of PT I.2, treating the necessary preparation for
listening to the treatise is reflected in the Syriac title and, indeed, the con-
tent of the first chapter of EHSyr. Proclus first describes the way in which
he is going to expose the theology of Plato, and second, he tells how the lis-
tener should ascend, through the ethical virtues, via the purification of the
thoughts and the study of physics, to the contemplation of beings, until he
establishes himself through divine love “in the stable and immutable and secure
kind of the knowledge of the divine things” and “through unshaken mind
and the indefatigable power of the life” he hastens to the divine light. This
is fairly closely paraphrased in the first chapter of EHSyr, which corresponds
to p. 63,3–64,14 in Heil’s edition, but whose Syriac text is much stronger than
the Greek. In fact, the latter seems to be heavily truncated. However, both
in EHGr and EHSyr, the stress is transferred from contemplative philosophy
to theurgy, “the divine activity,” which is accomplished in the liturgy of the
Church. Thus, the methodological exposition of Plato’s philosophy becomes
the light-manifestation of Jesus donating the ecclesiastic hierarchy (the high-
priesthood) to the Church. Also, the philosopher/theologian of Proclus is trans-
formed into the community of the Christian believers who, by the priesthood
donated to them, through the divine love
approach towards the substances which are above us, in our likeness to
them in the measure of our power, when we are likened to the immutabil-
ity and stability of their holy establishment. And by this, when we set our
gaze upon the blessed brightness of the divinity of Jesus and holily see the
things we are permitted to see, and are illuminated by the secret intelli-
gence of the knowledge of the things seen, then we receive the power to be
able to become saints and sanctifying, sons of light and illuminators, per-
fected by God and perfecting, priests and ordaining priests.62
This is a very strong text about the divinisation of the faithful through the
contemplation triggered by the liturgy, and is a subtle philosophico-mystical
reformulation of the words of Saint Paul: “till we come in the unity of the
faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13). However, while
expanding upon Saint Paul, Pseudo-Dionysius preserves even the vocabulary
of Proclus, whose “establishing himself in the stable and immutable and secure
kind of the knowledge of the divine things” (τῷ δὲ μονίμῳ καὶ ἀκινήτῳ καὶ άσφα-
62 I am citing here the Syriac version, which is more complete than the Greek. This is found
at Sin. Syr. 52 fol. 81rb–va, corresponding to Heil 64.5–14. Here, clearly EHGr has several
lacunae and only EHSyr preserves the original text. EHGr: ἀφιερώμενοι καὶ ἀφιερωταί, φωτο-
ειδεὶς καὶ … θεουργικοὶ τετελεσμένοι καὶ τελεσιουργοί … γενέσθαι δυνησόμεθα, which could be
translated, taking into consideration the lacunae as “we become capable to become offer-
ings and offerers, luminous and … working by God perfected and perfecting …” Now, in
the Syriac, “saints and sanctifying” translates ἀφιερώμενοι καὶ ἀφιερωταί, meaning in fact
“offerings and offerers”—see the liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom: “for you are the offerer
and the offering, the receiver and the dividend, Christ our God.” The parallel clearly shows
the Christological content of the Pseudo-Dionysian text. From the next pair, “sons of light
and illuminators” the Greek has only the first part of the pair: φωτοειδεῖς. Apparently, the
second pair, φωτίζοντες is missing. Where the Greek reads θεουργικοὶ τετελεσμένοι καὶ τελε-
σιουργοί “working by God perfected and perfecting,” the Syriac reads “perfected by God
and perfecting,” which, with very high probability, translates θεουργικῶς τετελεσμένοι καὶ
τελεσιουργοί. Apparently, due to the corruption of the text, a scribe changed θεουργικῶς
to θεουργικοί in order to give a pair to φωτοειδεῖς, thus obtaining “similar to the light and
acting divinely,” which, however, gives no good meaning. Finally, “priests and ordaining
priests” is missing from the Greek but is a logical addition referring to Christ’s eternal
priesthood. The original Greek of this pair must have been, taking into consideration
Sergius’ usual vocabulary, ἱερεὶς καὶ ἱερουργοὶ. Thus, the original must have read something
like this: ἀφιερώμενοι καὶ ἀφιερωταί, φωτοειδεὶς καὶ φωτίζοντες, θεουργικῶς τετελεσμένοι καὶ
τελεσιουργοί, ἱερεῖς καὶ ἱερουργοὶ γενέσθαι δυνησόμεθα.
298 perczel
λεῖ τῆς τῶν θείων γνώσεως προσιδρύσας εἴδει) becomes “when we are likened to
the immutability and stability of their holy establishment” (τῇ … ἀφομοιώσει
τοῦ μονίμου τε καὶ ἀνεξαλλάκτου τῆς αὐτῶν ἱερᾶς ἱδρύσεως in the Greek). But this
is just one example among many others for the Dionysian substitution of the
Christian liturgy to the activities in a philosophy school.63
PT I.3 is transcribed in the first chapter of the Mystical Theology, whose diver-
gent titles in the Greek and Syriac text traditions both go back independently to
Proclus’ title. From the comparison of the two chapters we can understand that
the “divine Obscurity” (ὁ θεῖος γνόφος) is nothing other than “the power of the
soul” according to which “the Platonic theologian” (in Pseudo-Dionysius’ tran-
scription the divinised Christian) “acts particularly.” Proclus defines this power
as the hyparxis of the soul, its “existence” beyond being, which he also calls “the
flower of the soul.”64 It is this Obscurity, which will come back in Letter V, as the
power for knowing the superluminous Darkness of Letter I.
The title and the content of PT I.3 is also echoed in Chapter III of EHSyr, cor-
responding to p. 65.22–68.15 in Heil’s edition. Here again, we see that Pseudo-
Dionysius replaces the life of the Platonist philosophy school with the liturgical
life of the Church. And this, once again, proves Alexander Golitzin’s intuition
on the central role of the Ecclesiastic Hierarchy and of liturgical spirituality in
the Dionysian Corpus. Moreover, if my intuition that the continuous reading of
the Platonic Theology governed the writing process of the Dionysian Corpus is
correct, then, in the way the first chapters of the Platonic Theology are handled,
one may see the intricate relationship between the Mystical Theology and the
Ecclesiastic Hierarchy, the liturgical contemplation being the means of the con-
templative elevation for Pseudo-Dionysius. One may also see that the themes
of the Celestial Hierarchy come much later—first with PT I.20!—although the
words of PT I.3. are also echoed in the Prologue to the Celestial Hierarchy. This
justifies Golitzin’s intuition:
As we maintain that the EH provides us with the unique context within

which the other treatises are to be read and their doctrine apprehended,
we cannot accept Roques’ analysis [according to which Dionysius was
imperfectly modelling his EH on the Neoplatonist structure of the CH] as
adequate. We look up to the CH (and DN/MT) from the EH and not down
from the angelic world to ours.65
63 See also, Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Platonic Theology,” 514.

64 See ibid., 521–522.
65 Golitzin, Et introibo ad altare Dei, 216–217; idem, Mystagogy, 241.
As far as the main text of the first three chapters of the Mystical Theology
is concerned, the first is clearly based on a paraphrase of the Platonic The-
ology I. 3. I must admit that I have not yet found the place where Pseudo-
Dionysius uses the body of PT I.4. It seems to me that the chapter title of
MT II. is modelled upon the title of PT I.4 and that, in this chapter, he fol-
lows the thought of the first paragraph of Proclus’ chapter in inverted order,
but the rest he does not use here. Rather, he adopts the thought of PT II.11 on
the ascent through negations and the descent through affirmations. MT III.
consists of two parts: its first part, which treats the—partly intra- and partly
extracorporeal—works of Pseudo-Dionysius’ positive theology, draws its inspi-
ration from PT I.5, which treats the Platonic dialogues from which the one
and comprehensive Platonic Theology is to be derived, while the second part
of this chapter in the Mystical Theology is modeled upon the end of chap-
ter I.11.
Chapters PT I.6–9 seem to be condensed in DN II, while DN III echoes PT
I.10 in its title, content and vocabulary. Here, Pseudo-Dionysius introduces his
usual transformations. The metaphysical speculation which, according to Pro-
clus, gives the correct interpretation of the nine hypotheses and the many
subhypotheses of the Parmenides as treating the principles among the beings,
is transformed here to the power of the prayer. It is here that Proclus intro-
duces the teaching of his teacher Syrianus, “our teacher on the truth about the
gods and the companion of Plato” (ὁ δὲ δὴ τῆς περὶ θεῶν ἡμῖν ἀληθείας καθηγεμὼν
καὶ τοῦ Πλάτωνος … ὀαριστής).66 Pseudo-Dionysius had already introduced his
“glorious teacher” (κλεινὸς καθηγεμών) Hierotheus in DN II.9, although without
naming him, but it is here that he glorifies him and his teaching as that of one of
the main actors of the Pseudo-Dormition scene, which I believe to be a cryptic
report on Chalcedon (see above in section 3, point 3).
It would be complicated and too long to follow the way Pseudo-Dionysius
uses the subsequent chapters of PT I. I have adduced some obvious cases only:
to PT I. 18 corresponds DN IV both according to its title and its content, but
in its first half, which is based on Proclus’ interpretation of the simile of the
Sun in Book VI of the Republic (507b–509c), it also uses very closely PT II. 7.
Besides this, it also draws on Proclus’ Commentary on the Republic. However,
while rewriting II.7, Pseudo-Dionysius weaves through Proclus’ interpretation
of the Sun simile scriptural references, that give to the text a strong Trinitarian
and Incarnational twist. Thus, when he says that the light of the ray of the Sun
“is from the Good and the Image of the Goodness” (DN IV.4, 147.2–3: ἐκ τἀγα-
66 PT I.10, p. 42.9–10.
300 perczel
θοῦ γὰρ τὸ φῶς καὶ εἰκὼν τῆς ἀγαθότητος), he is almost imperceptibly citing Wis
7:26: “For she (Wisdom) is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the
working of God, and the image of His Goodness (εἰκὼν τῆς ἀγαθότητος αὐτοῦ).” I
wrote “almost imperceptibly,” as this reference is missing from the critical edi-
tion, and—as far as I can judge—from the scholarly literature, too.
These scriptural references give a new meaning to the Sun simile. Thus, “our
Sun” (IV.1, 144.1: ὁ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἥλιος) becomes a metaphorical name for the incar-
nate Christ, whose Light, coming from the Good, is the divine nature in him,
while the Good is identified, here and elsewhere, with the Father. This scrip-
turalization of the Platonist analogy allows Dionysius to expose his Antiochian
Christology subtly. Thus, even the following passage is about Christ:
I do not say according to the word of the worn-out teaching (κατὰ τὸν
τῆς παλαιότητος λόγον) that the Sun, being God and the Creator of this
universe, himself oversees the visible world, but only that “the invisible
things” of God “from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and god-
head” (Rom 1:20). However, I should speak about this in the Symbolic
Theology.
DN IV.4–5, 149.5–9
The reference to the Symbolic Theology also indicates that “Sun” is here a sym-
bolical name, evidently for the incarnate Christ. And the “worn-out teaching”
is that of the Cyrillian party, which wrongly identifies the incarnate Christ with
God the Word, rather than that of the pagan sun worship. To this Cyrillian view,
Pseudo-Dionysius opposes the theory of ἀντένδειξις of Antiochian Christology,
according to which the humanity of the incarnate Christ is a non-identical mir-
ror image of the divine Logos dwelling in him. I understand that one of the most
‘scandalous’ findings of my research into the Dionysian Corpus is its Antiochian
Christology. Yet, this is an unavoidable conclusion, once the Antiochian sources
of the Dionysian Christological texts are found.67
The Christological understanding of the name “Light” continues when
Pseudo-Dionysius turns to the “intelligible light-naming” of the Good one (IV.5,
149.11: ὁ ἀγαθός as distinguished from τἀγαθόν, which is a name for the Father).
This denotes the “Ray emanating from the Source” (IV.6, 150.1–2: ἀκτὶς πη-
γαία)—an ancient Christological metaphor—which “illuminates all mind
67 On the Antiochian sources of Pseudo-Dionysius’ Christology see Perczel “Theodoret of

Cyrrhus.”
above, around and in the world from its fullness” (IV.6, 150.2–3: πάντα τὸν ὑπερ-
κόσμιον καὶ περικόσμιον καὶ ἐγκόσμιον νοῦν ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος αὐτοῦ καταλάμ-
πουσα). This is definitively “the true Light, which lights every man that comes
into the world,” from whose “fullness we all have received, and grace for grace”
(John 1:9, 16).
Space does not allow me to follow up this analysis of the way the Chris-
tian weft threads are woven into the warp of the Proclian exegesis of the Sun
simile, adopted in DN IV from PT II.7. Suffice it to say that the henadic gods
of Proclus, who are spreading the source-goodness of the One onto the entire
metaphysical and physical world are transformed here, through a monumen-
tal triadic and Christological metaphor, into the communication to the world
of the source-goodness of the Father by Christ and the Holy Spirit, who take
over the metaphysical role of the henads. This is a standard pattern, observable
at all parts of the Dionysian adaptation of the Platonic Theology in particular,
and of Proclus in general. In fact, already E.R. Dodds noted this transformation,
although he found it “grotesque.”68 Yet, this is precisely one of the elements
allowing Pseudo-Dionysius to construct a genuine Christian metaphysics.69
In the second half of DN IV, Pseudo-Dionysius switches to PT I.18, namely its
teaching that the gods are not the causes of any evil and he uses as weft thread
a reworked version of Proclus’ De malorum subsistentia. However, the question
with which this investigation starts is not Proclian but Christian:
If the Beautiful and Good is covetable, desirable and lovable to all, given
that even the non-existent is desiring it, as we have said, and tries to be
in it in a way, and if it is that which gives form to the formless and even
the non-being can be said, and is supersubstantially, concerning it, then,
how can it be that the crowd of the demons does not desire the Beautiful
and Good, but leaning toward matter and fallen from the angelic identity
68 Dodds, Proclus, The Elements of Theology, xxviii, concerning Pseudo-Dionysius’ adopting

of velut flores et supersubstantialia lumina, which Proclus says about the henads in De mal-
orum subsistentia 209.27, to refer to the Son and the Spirit in DN 2.7, 132.2–3.
69 On the Dionysian transformation of Proclus’ henadic theory into Trinitarian theology see
also Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Platonic Theology,” 502–503 and particularly Per-
czel, “The Pseudo-Didymian De trinitate and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: A Prelimi-
nary Study,” 92–95. The claim that Pseudo-Dionysius has eliminated the henads of Proclus
because the word henad occurs rarely in the plural in the CDA, made by Ernesto Sergio
Mainoldi (in “The Transfiguration of Proclus’ Legacy: Pseudo-Dionysius and the Late Neo-
platonic School of Athens,” in David D. Butorac and Danielle A. Layne, eds., Proclus and
His Legacy [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017], 199–217 at 208–210) does not correspond to
the evidence provided by the texts.
302 perczel
maintained by the desire of the Good, it is the cause of all the evil both
for itself and to all the others about whom we say that they are affected
by evil?
DN IV.18, 162.6–1270
It is well known that the close Proclian paraphrase that follows this question
had triggered the recognition, by Joseph Stiglmayr and Hugo Koch, of the Pro-
clian origins of Dionysian philosophy.71 Yet, it was only in 1997 that Carlos Steel
proposed that the whole argument about evil having a mere “parasite subsis-
tence” (παρυπόστασις) is introduced into DN IV to argue for the final salvation
of all, including the demons.72 In the same volume, I proposed that one of the
main eschatological passages in Dionysius, DN I.4, 112.10–14, speaks about the
final apocatastasis in the henad and monad of original creation, and analyzed
the same passage again, in another publication.73 Yet, since then, this recog-
nition has not come through. In particular, Emiliano Fiori has dedicated three
studies to prove that Pseudo-Dionysius is, in fact, on the anti-Origenist side, and
that the rather clear statements in the CDA about universal salvation74 should
70 Syriac text in Fiori, Dionigi Areopagita, 42.11–19. The Syriac displays the following variants:
“for leaning toward matter” and “fallen from the desire of the Good characteristic of the
angelic order.”
71 Stiglmayr, “Der neuplatoniker Proclus”; Koch, “Proklus als Quelle des Pseudo-Dionysius
Areopagita in der Lehre vom Bösen.”
72 Carlos Steel, “Proclus et Denys: De l’existence du mal,” in Ysabel de Andia, ed., Denys
l’Aréopagite et sa postérité en Orient et en Occident. Actes du Colloque International; Paris,
21–24 septembre 1994, Collection des Études Augustiniennes. Série Antiquité, 151 (Paris:
Études Augustiniennes, 1997), 89–116 at 101–102.
73 István Perczel, “Denys l’Aréopagite et Syméon le Nouveau Théologien,” in Ysabel de Andia,
ed., Denys l’Aréopagite et sa postérité en Orient et en Occident. Actes du Colloque Interna-
tional; Paris, 21–24 septembre 1994, Collection des Études Augustiniennes. Série Antiquité,
151 (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1997), 341–357 at 346–349 and István Perczel, “Une thé-
ologie de la lumière: Denys l’Aréopagite et Evagre le Pontique,” Revue des Études Augus-
tiniennes 45/1 (1999): 79–120 at 96–99.
74 See DN VIII.9, 205.20ff. and particularly: “If one would celebrate Salvation also as the one
who snatches, in a salvaging way, from the worse the whole beings (τὰ ὅλα: a Proclian
expression denoting the incorporeal beings), by all means we should accept this celebra-
tor of the salvation through all the ways (τοῦτον … τὸν ὑμνῳδὸν τῆς παντοδαπῆς σωτηρίας) …”
(ibid, 205.20–206.1 = Fiori, Dionigi Areopagita, 84.10–13). The Syriac reads the text slightly
differently: “If one would like to call Salvation also the one who ransoms in a salvaging way
all that exists from those things that are disgraceful for its nature, we would also accept
him by all means as a perfect celebrator of the salvation through many ways.” It is clear
that the Syriac translates by “salvation through many ways” the same term τῆς παντοδα-
πῆς σωτηρίας, which means “through all [the possible] ways.” “The one who snatches, in a
salvaging way, from the worse the whole beings” and is called Salvation, is Christ.
be understood in the Neoplatonist sense as preserving the present cosmolog-

ical order of creation.75 This is an odd way of arguing from Pseudo-Dionysius’
putative non-Christian Neoplatonism for his putative non-universalist ortho-
doxy against the idea of his universalist and eschatological Christianity. All the
odder is this argument as this interpretation of σωτηρία would suppose the idea
of an eternal world, the opposite of which is definitively Pseudo-Dionysius’ doc-
trine.76 Once again, in this debate, I would rather trust Alexander Golitzin’s
analysis about the eschatological dimension of the Dionysian Corpus.
Yet, the identification of the De trinitate as the Dionysian extracorporeal The-
ological Outlines and its indebtedness to the Platonic Theology offers a solution
to this problem, showing not only that Pseudo-Dionysius is definitively a Chris-
tian author, but also what kind of Christian he is. Here, Proclus’ words about
the nonexistence of evil are reworked in a more direct way to deny the exis-
tence of eternal punishment. The philosophical principle of the nonexistence
of evil, which for Proclus meant the dissolution of the particular evil in the
greater good of the whole and the universe, becomes in the DN, and even more
emphatically in the DT/TO, a doctrine of universal salvation. Earlier, I presented
this parallel, but I failed to recognise that the source of both texts is not simply
the De malorum subsistentia, but also PT I.18.
PT I. 18, 83.12–13; 84.16–27 DN IV, 19, p. 163, 11–14 = Sin. Syr. DT/TO II.6.8, 2, pp. 140–141
52, fol. 19 rb-va
Due to this cause of the exis- If all beings are from the Good, This is the one Good, the cause
tence, the gods are givers of good since the nature of the Good is for all things of all good things.
things and of no evil […] Nor is it to produce and to save, while the It is through It that the good that
allowed that here the evil come to nature of evil is to corrupt and to is here-below is being done. And
be unmixed, entirely deprived of destroy, there is none among the It saves all things to which It is
the good, and even if something beings that is from the evil, nor is present, just like evil, which accedes
is evil for the part, it is definitively [evil] the evil-itself, if indeed it is to us through free will, is corrup-
good for the whole and the uni- evil also for itself. Also, if it is not tive. This is what those outside
verse. For the universe is always that [that is, evil-itself], then evil understood and say that those evil
happy (Tim 34b8) and consists is not entirely evil but, as far as it have this greatest good in them-
always of perfect parts, which exists at all, it has a part of selves that while they try
75 See Emiliano Fiori, “Elementi evagriani nella traduzione siriaca di Dionigi l’Areopagita:
La strategia di Sergio di Rešʿayna,” Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi 27 (2010) 323–332; idem,
“Mélange eschatologique et ‘condition spirituelle’ de l’ intellect dans le corpus dionysi-
acum syriaque,” Parole de l’Orient 35 (2010): 261–276 and, especially, idem, “The Impossi-
bility of the Apocatastasis in Dionysius the Areopagite,” in Sylwia Kaczmarek et al., eds.,
Origeniana Decima: Origen as Writer (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 831–844, especially 839 ff.
76 See the Seventh Letter, and my interpretation thereof above, in section 3, point 3.
304 perczel
(cont.)
PT I. 18, 83.12–13; 84.16–27 DN IV, 19, p. 163, 11–14 = Sin. Syr. DT/TO II.6.8, 2, pp. 140–141
52, fol. 19 rb-va
exist according to nature. What is the good. Also, if the beings desire to do evil to others, they are the
against nature, has always been That which is Beautiful and Good first to reap the fruit of their own
evil for the particular beings and and if all things do whatever they wickedness,78 (8,3) but the Holy
it is in these that one finds ugli- do because of what looks good Spirit, as I have said earlier, being
ness, asymmetry, distortion and to them, and if for all the aim of the Good-without-need and the
parasite subsistence. In fact, what the beings the beginning and the Good-that-is-always-whole-for-
is corrupted becomes corrupted end is ⟨what looks⟩ good ⟨to them⟩, all-things, which is not second
for itself and leaves its own com- given that nobody does what he to the One and the First Good,
pleteness, but for the universe it does looking at the nature of evil, has received witnesses about this
is incorrupt and undecaying, and how would the evil be among the that are equal to those about the
whatever is deprived of the good beings, or how could ⟨evil⟩ exist Father and the Son, as it has been
is deprived in relation to itself and at all, being deprived of this good demonstrated in the First Book
its own subsistence because of desire?77 and as Ezra prophesised, freely
the weakness of its nature, but speaking to the divine Goodness,
for the whole and as part of the because he knew that, even if
universe, it is good. somebody commits a sin, it is
impossible that she [that is, the
divine Goodness] would make
him suffer: “and you gave your
good Spirit to return them to
their right mind (Ezra II [Neh]
19:20).”79
77 Καὶ εἰ τὰ ὄντα πάντα ἐκ τἀγαθοῦ, φύσις γὰρ τῷ ἀγαθῷ τὸ παράγειν καὶ σώζειν, τῷ δὲ κακῷ τὸ
φθείρειν καὶ ἀπολλύειν, οὐδέν ἐστι τῶν ὄντων ἐκ τοῦ κακοῦ, καὶ οὐδὲ αὐτό ἐστι [αὐτὸ ἔσται:
Suchla] τὸ κακόν, εἴπερ καὶ ἑαυτῷ κακὸν εἴη, καὶ εἰ μὴ τοῦτο, οὐ πάντη κακὸν τὸ κακόν, ἀλλ’
ἔχει τινὰ τἀγαθοῦ, καθ’ ἣν ὅλως ἔστι, μοῖραν· καὶ εἰ τὰ ὄντα τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ ἀγαθοῦ ἐφίεται, καὶ
πάντα ὅσα ποιεῖ, διὰ τὸ δοκοῦν ἀγαθὸν ποιεῖ, καὶ πᾶς ὁ τῶν ὄντων σκοπὸς ἀρχὴν ἔχει καὶ τέλος
τὸ ⟨δοκοῦν⟩ ἀγαθόν [τἀγαθὸν: Suchla]—οὐδὲν γὰρ εἰς τὴν τοῦ κακοῦ φύσιν ἀποβλέπον ποιεῖ ἃ
ποιεῖ—πῶς ἔσται τὸ κακὸν ἐν τοῖς οὖσιν, ἢ ὅλως ὂν τῆς τοιαύτης ἀγαθῆς ὀρέξεως παρῃρημένον
⟨τὸ κακόν⟩; The punctuation is mine and is different from the one in Suchla’s critical edi-
tion. I also have changed Suchla’s text at two points. First, I wrote αὐτό ἐστὶ instead of αὐτὸ
ἔσται—adopting the reading of two manuscripts, namely Pn and Pb according to Suchla’s
sigla and also changing the accent. On the one hand, this corresponds to Sergius’ transla-
tion and, on the other hand, I felt this necessary, because otherwise the continuation: καὶ
εἰ μὴ τοῦτο: ‘if it is not that’, that is, if evil is not evil-itself, would be meaningless. In fact, the
text does not entirely deny the existence of evil: it says that, as evil is also from the Good, it
is not absolute evil, precisely because it is evil also for itself and, so, auto-destructive and,
therefore, good. Sergius’ translation of this part can be translated so: “there is no being
created by the evil, nor is it evil itself, given that evil is also evil for itself. And given that it
6 Conclusions
Space does not allow me to continue the detailed analysis of the correspon-
dences in the table. I am inviting the expert readers to do so because this
comparison offers much food for thought.
To resume, one might say that this mysterious author has constructed not
only the Dionysian Corpus proper, but also the extracorporeal De trinitate/The-
ological Outlines, based on a transtextual reusal of Proclus’ Platonic Theology.
Besides revealing one of the most important traits of the author’s writing tech-
nique, this recognition gives us a precious tool to understand the way he used
and transformed Proclus’ metaphysical system by weaving into this warp the
weft of scriptural references, of other philosophical writings and of Christian
exegetical, spiritual and theological texts and ideas.
Based on this inquiry, I think one may definitively reject the hypothesis of
a “crypto-pagan” origin of the Corpus, cherished by such excellent authors,
who otherwise—one must say—have greatly contributed to the deeper under-
standing of this text, as E.R. Dodds, Ronald Hathaway, Carlo Maria Mazzucchi
and Tuomo Lankila. While it is difficult to maintain this hypothesis in the case
of the CDAn, it becomes impossible to apply it to the DT/TO, which is based on
scriptural exegesis, while also using the PT.
Yet, the Christianity expressed in these texts is not what we would conceive
of as “orthodox teaching” according to our present-day standards (also variable
according to present-day confessions). The author was definitively keen on giv-
ing a metaphysical structure to the Biblical revelation, but this was a rather nat-
ural aim in the early Christian centuries. Justinian’s condemnations beginning
with 529, that is, the closure of the Academy, and culminating in the condem-
is not this [that is, evil itself], it is not so that evil is evil in all respects …” I also wrote a sec-
ond time τὸ ⟨δοκοῦν⟩ ἀγαθόν for line 17 of Suchla’s edition, because apparently this is what
ܿ ܿ
Sergius translates: 焏‫ܠܡ‬熏‫ ܘܫ‬焏‫ܪܝ‬熏‫ ܫ‬焏‫ ܩܼܢ‬:焏‫ ܛܿܒ‬犯‫ܒ‬狏‫ ܕܡܣ‬焏‫ ܿܗܘ ܡ‬爏‫ ܕܟ‬焏‫ ܢܝܫ‬爏‫ܟ‬: “all
the aim of all things has got as its beginning and end that which looks like good.” Finally,
since the final clause sounds in Sergius’ text like this, “how will be evil among the beings
and, if it is at all, how would evil be deprived of this desire?,” I suppose that the last word
in this sentence in Sergius’ original was τὸ κακόν.
78 Καὶ αὐτό ἐστιν τὸ ἓν ἀγαθόν, αἴτιον πᾶσιν πάντων ἀγαθῶν· καὶ δι’ αὐτὸ πράττεται τὸ κάτω ἀγα-
θόν· καὶ αὐτὸ σώζει πάντα, οἷς ἂν παρῇ, ὥσπερ τὸ κακὸν ἐκ προαιρέσεως ἡμῶν συμβαῖνον φθείρει.
οὗ αἰσθόμενοι καὶ οἱ ἔξω φασὶν ὡς· οἱ κακοὶ τοῦτο μέγιστον ἔχουσιν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἀγαθόν· ἄλλους γὰρ
ἐπιχειροῦντες κακοῦν, αὐτοὶ πρότεροι τῆς ἑαυτῶν ἀπολαύουσι μοχθηρίας. See Hesiod, Erga 265,
6 and Stobaios 10, 77: “All unjust person first taste their own wickedness, before leaving it
to others.” The references have been indicated by Mingarelli and Seiler.
79 For a detailed comparison of the DN and DT/TO texts, see Perczel, “The Pseudo-Didymian
De trinitate and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: A Preliminary Study,” 100–107.
306 perczel
nations of the Three Chapters and of Origenism in 553, have greatly contributed
to the development of an anti-metaphysical Christianity, which was enhanced
by the appearance of Protestantism and has entered the scholarly consensus,
too. Yet, it is useful to remind ourselves that in the early Christian centuries,
up to the sixth, it was otherwise: Christian intellectuals had much less problem
conversing with the philosophy and science of their times.
The Christology of the CDA is definitively an Antiochian interpretation of
Chalcedon, a recognition which might sound scandalous in the light of over a
hundred years of research. The discovery of the direct sources of the Christo-
logical texts in the CDA does not leave any room for the traditional Cyrillian
interpretation of this Christology. One may object that there is a “Dormition of
the Holy Virgin” scene in DN III, but this pious interpretation does not stand to
reason. Yet, one thing is for sure: neither Pseudo-Dionysius’ Antiochian convic-
tions, nor the fact that the Antiochian interpretation of Chalcedon had been
under growing pressure until it got condemned at the Council of Constantino-
ple in 553, makes any one of its representatives an insincere Christian.
There remains the universalist perspective of the Corpus and its “Origenism,”
so-called. Definitively, the “Origenist” monks of Palestine have quite a bad
reputation in present-day scholarship. The general tendency is to prove that
they had misunderstood Origen and Evagrius, whose spiritual and intellec-
tual authority have been restored by modern scholars. The latter would like
to cleanse their heroes from the taint of “Origenism.” Yet, if we look at the
reception of both the Origenists and their condemnations in the second half
of the sixth and in the seventh centuries, we find that it was not unambigu-
ous at all. While the narrative of Cyril of Scythopolis, the great historian of the
anti-Origenist fight, is dominating our ideas, John Moschus tells the same story
otherwise. For example, Abba Nonnus, the leader of the Palestinian Origenists,
is painted in Cyril’s narrative in just slightly lighter colours than Beelzebub
but, apparently, he was considered a great saint not only by Leontius of Byzan-
tium, his pupil, but also by John Moschus.80 We still need much historical and
doctrinal study until we might understand what the real doctrines of these “Ori-
genists” were.
Be this as it may, my ongoing work on the edition and commented transla-
tion of the EHSyr has convinced me that Alexander Golitzin was right in placing
the EH in the centre of the Dionysian Corpus and of Dionysius’ thought in gen-
80 On this, see István Perczel, “Saint Maximus on the Lord’s Prayer: An Inquiry into His Rela-
tionship to the Origenist Tradition,” in Antoine Lévy et al., eds., The Architecture of the
Kosmos: St Maximus the Confessor—New Perspectives (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Society,
2015), 221–278 at 254–271.
eral. Although this should be clear from the Greek text as well, it is even clearer
from the Syriac—which I believe to preserve the original version of the text—
that the aim of the author of the CDA was to adapt Evagrius’ doctrine of spiritual
contemplation to the liturgical life of the Church. For Pseudo-Dionysius, it is
not simply the lonely ascetic, but the entire community of the faithful, which
should ascend to the highest levels of contemplation by means of theurgy, that
is, the sacraments and the liturgical life. This community is the corresponding
term, but also the counterpoint, of the community of elect philosophers in the
oeuvre of Proclus.
chapter 15
Individual and Liturgical Piety in Dionysius the

Areopagite
Andrew Louth
A sense of some tension between individual and liturgical piety seems to be

aboriginal to Christianity. In the Gospel, the Lord says, “When you pray, go into
your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret …” (Matt
6:6), and yet we know that the Lord himself attended worship in the synagogue
and in the Temple, though very much more is made of Jesus’ solitary prayer,
in the mountains, for instance, than his worship in public. Later in the Chris-
tian tradition there is a contrast between the hermit, praying alone away from
other people, in the desert or on the top of a pillar, and the worship of the
Christian community, gathered together for the Eucharist. The resolution of the
latter tension, at least, is perhaps to be found in the realization that the tension
between the prayer of the solitary and the prayer of the gathered community
most easily finds resolution if we see both as participating in different ways in
the liturgical worship of the heavenly courts, or—what I think is a variant of
the same thing—if we pay attention to the cosmic dimension of both solitary
prayer and the Divine Liturgy. That, I shall argue, is the case with Dionysius
the Areopagite: it is something that springs from the pages of Bishop Alexan-
der Golitzin, whom we are honouring in this symposium, though I shall take a
rather different way into this problem than does our revered bishop. Golitzin
is, however, almost alone in approaching the Areopagite in a spirit that finds
the alleged opposition of individual and community frankly quite puzzling,
and the extent to which continental, and especially German, scholarship on
the Areopagite stands aghast at the approach of Golitzin (and other English-
speaking scholars) has been made evident in Adolf Martin Ritter’s recently
published monograph, Dionys vom Areopag (though it could be argued that the
very title of Ritter’s book, not “Pseudo-Dionys,” bears the imprint of the schol-
arship he affects to despise).1
Distaste for Dionysius, often revolving round his conception of the Liturgy, is
not in the least purely German, but very much present in older English scholar-
1 Adolf Martin Ritter, Dionys vom Areopag (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018).

individual and liturgical piety in dionysius the areopagite 309
ship: both Westcott and Inge, for all their brilliance and insight, find Dionysius
ultimately intolerable.2 Both of them see the way he presents liturgical wor-
ship as fundamentally foreign, reducing it to a splendid spectacle, something
made worse by what they hold to be his notion of hierarchy, which fragments
the Christian community by setting the clergy against the laity, and indeed sev-
ering the Christian priesthood itself by introducing rigid notions of rank and
authority. For Inge, at least, there is something to be salvaged from the writ-
ings of the Areopagite, if one makes central (as much of the Western tradition
had been doing for centuries) the Mystical Theology, understood as setting out
the flight of the individual soul to the hidden darkness of the Unknown God.
In a variety of ways, much scholarship in the last century almost systemati-
cally misunderstood Dionysius by seeing in his writings a fundamental fissure
between the works on the hierarchies and the Divine Names and Mystical The-
ology thereby making impossible any grasp of the overall vision of the one who
wrote under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite.3 If saved at all, Dionysius
is saved by his undoubted place in the development of the Christian mysti-
cal tradition, especially in the West. Such a way of viewing the Areopagite has
the almost inevitable consequence of devaluing the place of the liturgy in the
Dionysian vision, despite the fact that on almost every page he seems to take
for granted that this theology has a liturgical context (obvious in the case of the
works on the hierarchies; evident from the way in which the divine names are
understood as ways of praising, or hymning, God, rather than concepts describ-
ing God; for the Mystical Theology, see Paul Rorem’s seminal article, “Moses as
the Paradigm for the Liturgical Spirituality of Pseudo-Dionysius”).4 A particu-
larly perverse way of detaching Dionysian theology from its liturgical context is
found among not a few Orthodox theologians, who regard Dionysius as having
corrupted any genuine understanding of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy by mak-
ing participation in the Liturgy a matter of “mysteriological liturgical piety,” to
use the expression of Alexander Schmemann5—“perverse,” for such an atti-
tude makes it impossible to make anything the whole tradition of liturgical
2 For Westcott, see his essay, “Dionysius the Areopagite,” in Brooke Foss Westcott, ed., Essays in
the Religious Thought in the West (London: Macmillan, 1891), 142–193; for Inge, see his Bamp-
ton Lectures 1899: William Ralph Inge, Christian Mysticism, 3rd ed. (London: Methuen, 1913),
104–122.
3 The most intransigent assertion of this fissure is to be found in Jean Vanneste, Le mystère de
Dieu (Brussels: Desclée de Brouwer, 1959).
4 Paul Rorem, “Moses as the Paradigm for the Liturgical Spirituality of Pseudo-Dionysius,” Stu-
dia Patristica 18.2 (Louvain: Peeters, 1989), 275–279.
5 Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (London: Faith Press, 1966), 155.
310 louth
commentary in the Byzantine world from Maximos the Confessor, through Ger-
manos of Constantinople, to Nicholas Kavasilas. Along with such an approach
to Dionysius there goes an anxiety about his “Neoplatonism,” to the extent
that Dionysius is regarded as introducing into Christian liturgy ideas funda-
mentally pagan, with little attempt made to understand the religious piety of
late antique, “Neoplatonic” paganism, characterizing it in crudely dismissive
terms.6
What I hope to do in the rest of this paper is explore a way of understand-
ing the vision of the Areopagite in which liturgical and individual piety deepen
and reinforce each other. I shall attempt this by looking at two notions on any
understanding central to Dionysius’ theology: hierarchy and symbol. This may
seem a strange strategy to adopt, given that the detractors of Dionysius almost
universally regard hierarchy and symbolism as lying at the heart of the Are-
opagite’s waywardness.
To understand how these two notions, hierarchy and symbol, shed light
on the question of personal and liturgical piety, it is necessary to realize that
behind both notions there lies another, namely that of love. That, too, how-
ever, is controversial, for the division, mentioned above, between the works on
the hierarchies, on one hand, and the Divine Names and Mystical Theology, on
the other, can be held to be reinforced by the presence of the notion of love in
Dionysius’ thought, absent from all treatises apart from the Divine Names. Let
us, however, approach this more systematically and start with the question of
the unity of the Corpus Areopagiticum.
It has often been argued—most forcefully, perhaps, by Jean Vanneste7—that
the Dionysian Corpus calls into two parts: on the one hand, the treatises on the
hierarchies, and on the other, the Divine Names and Mystical Theology, a divi-
sion manifest René Roques’ two important books—L’ Univers dionysien8 and
Structures théologiques.9 On the face of it, such a divide seems implausible.
The Corpus Areopagiticum is presented as the surviving treatises and letters
of a much larger corpus, most of which apparently lost. Dionysius (as I shall
call their author) makes frequent cross-references to the lost works, giving the
impression that they form together a kind of architectural whole. This may,
however, be part of the smokescreen of Dionysius’ anonymity and have no real
6 Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 2nd ed. (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press/Sophia Perennis,
2014) provides a good corrective to such a dismissal of pagan Neoplatonism.
7 See note 3.
8 René Roques, L’Univers dionysien. Structure hiérarchique de monde selon le Pseudo-Denys
(Paris: Aubier, 1954).
9 René Roques, Structures théologiques de la gnose à Richard de Saint-Victor (Paris: PUF, 1963).
relevance to the structural unity of the surviving works.10 It is, in any case, not
easy to draw any very firm conclusions from lost works that have left no appar-
ent trace. This question needs to be raised here, for in opposing the treatises
on the hierarchies to the Divine Names and Mystical Theology, one is gener-
ally opposing a cosmological or metaphysical understanding of the cosmos
in terms of hierarchy to a more inward ascent to God that moves from affir-
mation, kataphasis, to negation, apophasis, or from a fragmented manifold to
mystical union with God, through a process of purification, illumination, and
union (though this threefold process is much more evident in the works on
the hierarchies). It is further noted that Dionysius’ understanding of mysti-
cal ascent makes no use of his doctrine of hierarchy—there is no suggestion
that the hierarchies are ladders to climb to reach union with God—and, fur-
thermore, that love, which presumably lies at the heart of the mystical ascent,
has no obvious role in the doctrine of the hierarchies. Approached lexically,
the point about love may well prove too much, for ἔρως and its cognates are
indeed mainly used in the Divine Names, but the contrast is most striking with
the Mystical Theology, where words for love are used not at all; occasional, but
not very striking uses of ἔρως and its cognates, are to be found in the hierar-
chical treatises and a few times in the letters. Other words for love—ἀγάπη,
φιλία—are hardly used at all, though φιλανθρωπία, for God’s love for us, is not
uncommon.
Lexical considerations only take us so far. I want to suggest that, even if the
word love is absent or rare in other parts of the Corpus Areopagiticum than
the Divine Names, nevertheless the notion is central. Dionysius discusses the
notion of love at length in chapter 4 of the Divine Names, devoted to the name
of the Good: ἀγαθωνυμία, ἀγαθότης, τὸ ἀγαθόν. This is the first chapter actually
dedicated to names of God, as opposed to the names we use in relation to the
Trinity, which introduces a series of names, continuing with being, life, wisdom,
and concluding with the perfect and the One. To start with the Good in this
way betrays Dionysius’ fundamentally Platonic affinities: he is well aware of the
position the Form of the Good holds in Plato’s thought, especially in the Repub-
lic; the analogy of the sun in Republic VI. 507–509, very likely mediated through
later writers such as Proclus, lies behind his initial reflections on the Good.
Dionysius soon moves on to add to the notion of the Good, τὸ ἀγαθόν, the notion
of the Beautiful, τὸ καλόν, or Beauty, τὸ κάλλος. These are not to be distinguished,
10 Hans Urs von Balthasar takes this architectural structure very seriously: see idem, The
Glory of the Lord, II (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984), 154–164. Other scholars are sceptical
of the very existence of the lost works.
312 louth
because beauty is the “cause of the harmony and splendour” in everything; it

is a ray pouring forth from a hidden source, says Dionysius, echoing an impor-
tant insight of Plotinus’—that beauty is essentially to be found not in a quality
such as harmony or symmetry, but in transparence to higher reality11—shining
on everything beautiful, bestowing on it a radiance from beyond. It is because
it calls—καλοῦν—everything to itself that it is called κάλλος, beauty. Beauty is
not just something pleasing; it lies at the heart of reality:
For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community. Beauty

unites all things and is the source of all things. It is the great creating cause
which bestirs the world and holds all things in existence by the longing
(ἔρως) inside them to have beauty … The Beautiful is therefore the same
as the Good, for everything looks to the Beautiful and the Good as the
cause of being, and there is nothing in the world without a share of the
Beautiful and the Good.
DN 4:704AB
It is because of the Good and the Beautiful (I don’t think Dionysius actually
uses καλοκαγαθία) that everything exists and everything relates one to another.
Both the harmony of all things and their mutual sympathy, as well as their
individual reality, are due to the Good and the Beautiful: Dionysius speaks of
the κοινωνίαι of the opposed, the ἀσσυμμιξίαι of the united, the πρόνοιαι of the
higher, the ἀλληλουχίαι of like-constituted, the ἐπιστροφαί of the more needy—
all of these manifest the rest and repose, protecting and unchanging, that
beings have among themselves (704B). Dionysius goes on to speak of the three-
fold movement—direct, circular, and spiral—that is to be found among both
intellects and souls. From these movements, all inspired by the Good and the
Beautiful, comes all the variety and harmony of the cosmos. Such movement
originates from the desire, and the love, both ἔρως and ἀγάπη, that all things
have for the Good and the Beautiful.
This leads into what might appear at first sight to be a digression about the
use of ἔρως and ἀγάπη. He imagines objections being made to his use of ἔρως,
as it is not found in the Scriptures. One might wonder why someone writing,
most likely, in the early sixth century would see this as a still-live issue, but,
of course, Dionysius is pretending to be writing at the turn of the first century
and is aware of objections to the use of ἔρως in earlier times. Indeed, in his con-
sciousness of his mask, he almost lets it slip, for it is clear (though only pointed
11 See Plotinos, Enneads VI. 7. 22.

out fairly recently by István Perczel)12 that Dionysius bases himself in this sec-
tion on Origen’s discussion of ἔρως and ἀγάπη in the preface to his commentary
on the Song of Songs. He condenses and misses much of Origen’s argumenta-
tion, but his argument that ἔρως and ἀγάπη have the same meaning—and what
matters is the power of what is meant (ἡ δύναμις τοῦ σκοποῦ) and not simply
the words—is Origen’s as well as most of the citations he uses in support of his
argument: Prov 4:6, 8 (LXX: Ἐράσθητι αὐτῆς—“Love her,” spoken of Wisdom),
and Wis 8:2 (“I became a lover [Ἐραστὴς ἐγενόμην] of her beauty”), and the cita-
tion from the “divine Ignatius”—“my love [ἔρως] has been crucified” (Ad Rom.
7.2). Just before introducing that quotation from Ignatius, Dionysius remarks
that “it appears to some of our writers on sacred matters [ἱερολόγων] that the
name ἔρως is more divine than that of ἀγάπη.” (DN 4.12:709B). One would expect
Dionysius to be referring to scriptural writers, though his usual word for them
is θεολόγος, not ἱερολόγος, and indeed he goes on to quote Ignatius, but there is
a writer who does indeed seem to say that ἔρως is more divine than ἀγάπη: and
that is St Gregory of Nyssa. In the first Homily on the Song of Songs (PG 44:772)
he argues for ἔρως in preference to ἀγάπη, and in the thirteenth homily he says
that ἀγάπη stretched to intensity (ἐπιτεταμένη) is ἔρως (Or. 13:1048C).13 I am not
suggesting that Dionysius would have expected his readers to have picked up
the reference—that would have completely blown his pseudonym—but if they
thought of Gregory of Nyssa in this context, it would have confirmed the sense
that quickly gained ground that Dionysius was a thoroughly Orthodox theolo-
gian (and, in the eyes of his readers, a possible source for the notions of love one
finds in Origen and Gregory of Nyssa). His teaching on love, eros, is summed up
a paragraph or two later:
Divine ἔρως is ecstatic [a paraphrase of Gregory’s ἐπιτεταμένη γὰρ ἀγάπη

ὁ ἔρως λέγεται?], so that lovers belong not to themselves but to those they
love. This is manifest in the providence shown to the weaker by the higher,
in the mutual regard for those of equal status, and in the more divine
return of the lower towards the first. Therefore also the divine Paul, pos-
sessed by divine ἔρως and swept up by its ecstatic power, says with divine
voice, “I live, but no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” As a true lover, and
beside himself, as he says, in God, he is living not his own life, but that life
exceedingly longed for, the life of his beloved.
712A
12 See István Perczel, “Le Pseudo-Denys, lecteur d’Origène,” in Wolfgang A. Bienert and Uwe
Kühneweg, ed., Origeniana Septima (Leuven: Peeters, 1999), 674–710.
13 See Daniélou’s discussion in Platonisme et théologie mystique (Paris: Aubier, 1954), 206–
208.
314 louth
And Dionysius goes on to add that
We must dare to add this as being no less true; that the Source of all things
Himself, in His wonderful and good love for all things, through the excess
of His loving goodness, is carried outside Himself, in His providential
care for all that is, so enchanted is He in goodness and love and longing.
Removed from His position above all and beyond all, He descends to be
in all according to an ecstatic and transcendent power, which is yet insep-
arable from Himself.
712AB
And says, furthermore, that the divine love shows especially its unending
nature without beginning like some eternal circle travelling in unerring revolu-
tion through the Good, from the Good, in the Good and into the Good, always
with the same centre and in accordance with itself eternally proceeding and
remaining and being restored to itself. (712D–713A).
This goes well beyond Aristotle’s vision of the unmoved mover, which
“moves through being loved” (κινεῖ δὲ ὡς ἐρώμενον: Metaph. Λ 7 1072b3): in
ecstatic divine love, God moves through all his creation (note that in this sec-
tion Dionysius is not thinking about God’s love in the Incarnation, but simply
about his cosmic love),14 and all love, uniting and preserving, is a manifestation
of God’s own love (Dionysius’ sense that all love is one is perhaps why he can
quote the Lord’s words to the prostitute in Luke 7:47 in support of his assertion
that the divine light awakens love in those who perceive it: DN 4. 5: 701A).
There are a few points I want to pick out of this exposition. First, Dionysius’
doctrine of love is both cosmic and personal: it is God’s love that lies behind
everything that is, but the example of the apostle Paul shows that that he is
talking about love as experienced by human beings. Secondly, love is essentially
unitive: God’s love, reaching through the created order, holds it in unity and
prevents fragmentation; human love for God seeks union with God—“God’s
breath in man returning to his birth,” to use George Herbert’s words. Diony-
sius’ first quotation from his mentor Hierotheos’ Hymns of Love affirms this
concisely:
Love, whether divine, angelic, intelligent, psychic, or natural, we are to

conceive of as a certain unifying and blending power, moving the supe-
14 See Catherine Osborne (now, again, Rowett), Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 195ff.
rior to providential care for the inferior, those that are equal again to a
mutual communion, and finally what is lower to return to what is better
and higher.
DN 4.15: 713AB
Thirdly, love, both divine and human, is ecstatic. By that, Dionysius does not
primarily refer to love as rapture, though his language in speaking of God’s
ecstatic love seems to be reaching for some way of expressing rapture in God.
Love’s ecstasy means making someone else the centre and focus of one’s
actions: it is ek-static, stepping outside oneself, and in that sense being “beside
oneself,” by evacuating self, and making someone else—in Paul’s case Christ,
or God—the centre of one’s life and activities.
I think it is clear that such a notion of love is what is being expressed by
Dionysius in his doctrine of the hierarchies, especially if we attend to what he
says (he did, after all, coin the word, ἱεραρχία) and resist being distracted by the
modern sociological understanding of hierarchy as essentially concerned with
order and rank and subordination of the lower to the higher. Dionysius’ notion
of hierarchy is certainly concerned with order: hierarchy expresses the move-
ment from the unity of God through the multiplicity of the created, a move-
ment which is certainly a movement from the higher, which is more united,
to the lower, which is more fragmented and dissipated. However, for Diony-
sius, the central purpose of hierarchy is unitive, drawing the whole created
order back into unity with God: he makes this clear in the Celestial Hierar-
chy when he defines hierarchy as, in his view (κατ’ ἐμὲ), “a sacred order and
knowledge and activity that assimilates to the deiform as far as is possible
and analogously leads up to imitation of God through the enlightenments
bestowed on it from God” (CH 3.1: 164D). It is through hierarchy that, in Diony-
sius’ view, God’s unitive love is manifest in the cosmos. It is self-evidently
cosmic, as in his exposition of ἔρως in Divine Names 4: his exposition of the
ranks of celestial beings, ranked three by three, is an attempt to express a
Christian cosmology, made explicit in his calling Jesus τὴν πασῶν ἱεραρχιῶν
ἀρχὴν καὶ τελείωσιν, “the principle and perfection of all hierarchies” (EH 1.1.3:
373B).
Love and hierarchy are then, I would maintain, not opposing principles,
revealing a fissure in the Corpus Dionysiacum, but rather the two poles of Diony-
sius’ understanding of the cosmos as a theophany, a manifestation of God’s love
calling all back into union.
From considering hierarchy, let us now move on to symbol. It is generally
recognized that Dionysius the Areopagite provided a theory of symbolism that
was immensely influential throughout the Middle Ages, both in the east and in
316 louth
the west.15 The term σύμβολον is found throughout his writings, most frequently
in his Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, but the most careful discussion of the nature of
symbolism is found in the second chapter of the Celestial Hierarchy, where the
primary context is that of how we are to describe and talk about the heavenly
beings, though the discussion frequently goes further and talks about the use
of symbolism in relation to talking about God himself. It is, however, striking
that Dionysius gives his most elaborate account of symbolism in relation to the
heavenly or angelic beings, and that is a topic I want to develop later on. First
of all, however, let us place Dionysius’ discussion of symbolism in the context
of Neoplatonism, indeed in a slightly wider context of interpretation.
In this, I am guided for the most part by Peter Struck’s—not now all that
recent book—The Birth of the Symbol.16 In that book Struck explored the devel-
opment of symbolism as a way of writing and interpreting poetry, distinguish-
ing it from what he called the rhetorical tradition, associated with Aristotle, and
in the Latin world Horace and Quintilian, which focused on metaphor, and saw
literature, and poetry in particular, as concerned primarily with communicat-
ing ideas to the reader, or audience, and therefore with clarity of conception,
and how to communicate with the reader/audience and inspire appropriate
emotions for the reception of what was being communicated: fear or pity,
delight or wonder. In contrast, Struck was concerned to identify another tradi-
tion of writing and interpreting literature and poetry that sought in literature
the expression of deep truths in the form of riddles or αἰνίγματα, that were
veiled in a deliberate obscurity and required patient untangling in order to yield
their meaning. Struck traced this tradition from Pythagoras, through the Stoics,
to the Neoplatonists, and it is with the Neoplatonists and their influence on
Dionysius that we shall take up the tale. One advantage of Struck’s approach is
that symbolism and allegory are not presented as devices for eliciting unlikely
meanings from improbable sources, as is the tendency for any literary approach
that starts from the rhetorical tradition of classical and late antiquity. Rather, it
is an approach to poetry and literature that values obscurity and the need for
patient unriddling, and it need hardly be said that it is a tradition that has its
own place in the history of literature in many cultures, from Anglo-Saxon riddle
poems, to the deliberate veiled obscurity of the poets called “metaphysical” in
English literature, to the Romantics, the Symbolists and the Modernists, for all
15 See Ysabel de Andia’s illuminating article, “Symbole et mystère selon Denys le Pseudo-
Aréopagite,” reprinted in eadem, Denys l’Aréopagite: Tradition et metamorphoses (Paris:
Vrin, 2006), 59–94.
16 Peter T. Struck, The Birth of the Symbol. Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts (Prince-
ton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004).
of whom difficulty, obscurity, is a necessary step to the grasp of truths beyond

the trivial, and especially to truth that claims to be sacred. As Mallarmé put it:
“Toute chose sacrée et qui veut demeure sacrée s’ enveloppe de mystère.”17
Struck’s book ends with Proclus (apart from a deliberately sketchy account
of the influence of the tradition he has traced in the Middle Ages—including
Dionysius—and the Renaissance). In his discussion of Proclus, he begins with
a brief word about Proclus’ ontology, and in particular the way in which his
understanding of procession from the One bestows on matter a certain dignity,
for matter, in its simplicity, participates more directly in the One than more
complex beings such as plants, living beings and even human beings. It is for
this reason that, as Struck puts it, “matter now plays a pivotal role in the larger
structures of the cosmos.”18 It is this that makes it possible for symbolism to
provide access to divine reality: poets, through their tales and the use of sym-
bols and divine names, sculptors and other artisans through the making of cult
statues. Language making, in the hands of the poets, is parallel to the making of
cult statues: something is caught in the symbolism of the poetic language that
can be traced back to the One itself, and can be a means by which lower beings
are drawn up towards the higher. This focuses on the use of divine names. The
way this operates, however, is not by words—the divine names—performing
some kind of mimesis, imitation, but rather by words invoking the divine pres-
ence attested by the divine names. The rejection of mimesis has an important
consequence, which can be seen from this passage from Proclus’ commentary
on the Republic:
How could one call the poetry that interprets divine matters by means of
symbols “imitation”? For symbols are not imitations [μιμήματα] of those
things of which they are symbolic. For things could never be imitations
of their opposites, the shameful of the beautiful, the unnatural of the nat-
ural. But the symbolic mode indicates the nature of things even through
what is most strongly antithetical to them.19
Symbols can function as symbols while being quite opposite to that to which
they refer. Symbols have some kind of ontological link, revealed in the divine
17 Hérésies artistiques—“L’art pour tous,” in Henri Mondor and Georges Jean-Aubry, ed.,
Stéphane Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), 257.
18 Struck, Birth of the Symbol, 233.
19 Wilhelm Kroll, ed., Procli Diadochi in Platonis rem publicam commentarii, 2 vol., Biblio-
theca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana (Leipzig: Teubner, 1899–1901)
1.198. 13–19; translation, Struck, Birth of the Symbol, 239.
318 louth
name, and they function by being invoked, not because they resemble the real-
ity to which they refer. The poet, then, functions as what Struck calls a “cog” in
the machinery of emanation: the recitation of his poetry sets off a sort of reso-
nance with the divine reality to which it refers and draws the one who recites
or listens into a kind of communion with the divine reality referred to by the
symbol. In some way, the symbol participates in that to which it refers; there
is established a kind of sympathy that draws the worshipper into the divine
orbit; the poet passes beyond being a theologian, who says something about
the gods, rather his words establish a link with them: the poet becomes a theur-
gist.20
Even from such a bare summary, it is evident that what we find in Diony-
sius is indebted to Proclus, or his tradition. The only difference seems to be
that Dionysius seems to keep divine names and symbols in separate compart-
ments: the divine names are conceptual for the most past—goodness, being,
life, wisdom, etc.—while the symbols are drawn from material reality. Symbols
in CH 2 are presented as necessary props if we are to use material, sensible real-
ity to describe the spiritual realm, whereas divine names are concepts that are
used to make some sense of God who transcends intelligible reality. But the
distinction is not one that Dionysius maintains consistently: in his discussion
in DN 1. 6 of how God is hymned “both as nameless and from every name,” he
passes seamlessly from divine names such as being, life, goodness, to a list of
sensible names (or symbols) such as “sun, star, fire, water, wind, dew, cloud,
rock itself and stone, all beings and none of the beings” (DN 1. 6: 596C). As Eric
Perl points out, the metaphysical basis for his theory of symbols is the same as
for his theory of divine names, for God transcends utterly both the realm of the
senses and the realm of the intellect.21 The parallel between (sensible) symbols
and (intelligible) divine names is underlined by the correspondence between
apophatic and kataphatic theologies (or ways of naming God) and unlike and
like symbolism; in both cases the two opposites are held together and the neg-
ative form—apophatic theology and unlike symbolism—held to be more fun-
damentally true (or less false). So Dionysius’ distinction between divine names
and symbols scarcely marks him off from Proclus. To Proclus’ poets correspond
Dionysius’ θεολόγοι, the scriptural writers, though these are not the only people
who praise God by the divine names, according to Dionysius: that is the spe-
cial role of the hierarchs, not least the revered Hierotheos, and seems to be the
20 The past few paragraphs are a rather banal summary of Struck’s presentation in his chap-
ter on Proclus: op. cit., 227–253.
21 Eric D. Perl, Theophany. The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite (Albany:
SUNY, 2007), chapter 7 (“Symbolism”), 101–109 passim.
function of any bishop when celebrating the Eucharistic liturgy. Furthermore,

Proclus’ understanding of poetry as invocation is perfectly reflected in Diony-
sius’ understanding of the divine names (and by extension symbols) as means
by which we do not describe God (which would entail some notion of lan-
guage as mimetic), so much as praise him: ὑμνεῖν. All that is true. It remains the
case, however, that, although Dionysius makes effective use of Proclus’ theory
of language as invocation, rather than imitation, the tradition of using lan-
guage as invocatory is something Dionysius inherited from within Christian
practice, not something he introduced to the Christian tradition. One only need
recall the opening words of the anaphora of St John Chrysostom (which may
not be Chrysostom’s, but is certainly older than Dionysius): Ἄξιον καὶ δίκαιον
σὲ ὑμνεῖν, σὲ εὐλογεῖν, σὲ αἰνεῖν, σοὶ εὐχαριστεὶν, σὲ προσκυνεῖν ἐν παντὶ τόπῳ τῆς
δεσποτείας σου. Σὺ γὰρ εἶ Θεὸς ἀνέκφραστος, ἀπερινόητος, ἀόρατος, ἀκατάληπτος,
ἀεὶ ὤν, ὡσαύτως ὤν (“It is right and fitting to hymn you, to bless you, to praise you,
to give you thanks, to worship you in every place of your dominion; for you are
God, ineffable, incomprehensible, invisible, inconceivable, ever existing, eter-
nally the same …”) or even, if I may quote, the opening words of the Roman
canon missae: Te igitur, clementissime Pater, per Iesum Christum, Filium tuum,
Dominum nostrum, supplices rogamus, ac petimus, uti accepta habeas et benedi-
cas, haec dona, haec munera, haec sancta sacrificial illibata … In both cases the
use of anaphora—σὲ, σὲ, σὲ; haec, haec, haec; and especially the repeated alpha-
privative (even enlisting ἀεὶ!) in the anaphora of St John Chrysostom—lend to
the prayer an invocatory dimension that goes beyond the meaning of what it
said in the words uttered.
But the angels? Angels, or celestial beings (because, for Dionysius, strictly
speaking, angels are the names of the lowest rank of celestial beings), seem to
fulfil several roles in Dionysius’ theology. They are intermediary beings, leading
human beings to God, and conveying from God divine enlightenment. Already
well before Dionysius’ time, the role of the angels had been developed as pre-
cisely intermediary between God and human kind: sharing with God the prop-
erty of being beyond our understanding, and with us the conviction that God
is beyond any conception they or we can form of him. Already in his homi-
lies on the Incomprehensibility of God, St John Chrysostom had incorporated
the angels into his theology of the transcendent incomprehensibility of God.22
Dionysius, however, goes much further, principally by introducing his notion of
22 See Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Incomprehensibility of God, 1. 302–327; 3. 53–265,

esp. 194–265; 4. 1–315 passim, in Anne Marie Malingrey and Robert Flacelière, eds., Jean
Chrysostome, Sur l’incompréhensibilité de Dieu, SC 28 (Paris: Cerf, 1970).
320 louth
hierarchy. As Dionysius defines it (and it seems to be his coinage), hierarchy is

“in my view” (κατ’ ἐμὲ) “a sacred order and knowledge and activity that assimi-
lates to the deiform as far as is possible and analogously leads up to imitation of
God through the enlightenments bestowed on it from God” (CH 3.1; 164D). Hier-
archy is not primarily what we nowadays call hierarchy—a system of graded
ranks—but a process by which beings are assimilated to God. This involves,
as Dionysius unfolds it, his system of ranks of celestial beings ranked three
by three—three ranks of three graded beings—where the threefold element
expresses and effects the threefold process that leads to union with God or per-
fection: the process of purification, enlightenment, and union or perfection. It
is interesting to note that, whereas mimetic language had been set aside, fol-
lowing Proclus, in his discussion of unlike symbolism, the language of mimesis
once again finds a place in Dionysius’ thought: hierarchy leads up ἐπὶ τὸ θεο-
μίμητον, “to imitation of God.” What has happened, I think, is that the “unlike”
has been incorporated in the process of purification, enlightenment and union;
purification has something of a moral dimension, but its real function is episte-
mological, to prepare the created mind to receive the enlightenment that leads
to union, and part of that, presumably, is recognizing the “unlike” element in
symbolism, so as to interpret the symbols in the right way, that is, in the way
that enables the symbols to lead one to participation in that of which they are
symbols, and furthermore to acknowledge that there is no “objective” revela-
tion in the sense of divinely guaranteed information, but rather revelation as
transformative initiation. As Dionysius puts it,
If anyone says that theophanies take place directly and immediately to

certain of the holy ones, let him learn, and that clearly from the most
sacred oracles, that “no one has seen,” or shall see, the hiddenness itself
of God as it is, and that theophanies occurred to the pious in accor-
dance with manifestations fitting to God through certain sacred visions
analogous to those who saw them. The all-wise theology naturally calls
that vision, which manifests depicted in itself the divine likeness as a
shaping of the shapeless, a theophany, from the leading up of those who
behold towards the divine as through the divine enlightenment itself that
comes upon those who behold, and from their being sacredly initiated
into something of the divine.
CH 4. 3; 180C
But this process, as Dionysius makes clear, is not some individual, intellec-
tual process, but something mediated by angels, and also by the community
of the Church, primarily, though not, I think, exclusively, the ordained minis-
ters. Chapters 4 to 14 of the Celestial Hierarchy explore various aspects of the

process of assimilation to the divine mediated by the principle and reality of
hierarchy, and then there follows the final chapter 15 which deals in detail with
the symbolism used to understand the realm of celestial intelligible beings, and
beyond that God Himself. It is striking that in this final chapter all the cautions
about the necessity of paying attention to unlike symbolism seem to be set
on one side. All the symbols introduced, from fire onwards, are interpreted in
what seems to me a mimetic way. So, of fire, he says, “the fiery, therefore, I think
manifests that which is most deiform in the heavenly intellects. For the sacred
theologians often describe the being beyond being and shapeless in terms of
fire, as possessing many images, if one may say so, of the thearchic property,
as in visible things” (CH 15. 2; 329A). One finds the same in the explanation of
how the parts of the (human? animal?) body are applied to God; the principle
of interpretation is mimesis.
I haven’t explored Proclus anything like as carefully as I have Dionysius, so
I can’t be sure how resolute Proclus is in abandoning a mimetic concept of
language in relation to the divine. But my impression is that he remains fairly
consistent.
Which leads to a final reflection, which passes beyond Dionysius. Unlike
symbolism—for both Proclus, as we have seen, and for Dionysius—is based,
metaphysically, on the realization that the material, in its relative simplicity,
participates more directly in the One. It is a point Dionysius affirms in his Chris-
tian manner when he affirms that “furthermore, it is necessary to understand
this, that of the things that are none is completely deprived of participation
in the beautiful (καλοῦ), since, as the truth of the oracles declares, ‘everything
was exceedingly good,’” quoting Genesis 1:31 (CH 2. 3; 141C). That might suggest
that the capacity to use symbolism opens up possibilities of understanding and
communion denied to purely spiritual beings, whose knowledge is purely intel-
lectual. The idea that human beings, because they are complex beings of soul
and body, and not just simple intellectual beings like the angels, can participate
in the divine in a richer way than the angels, even if maybe it is less secure, is an
idea that surfaces from time to time in the Christian tradition. The first example
I am aware of is in St John Damascene, who features in Struck’s final chapter,
“Symbol Traces,” with a couple of lukewarm pages.23 John developed an elab-
orate theory of images or symbols, that draws on the conviction that matter is
created by God and is therefore in some way capable of disclosing the divine, as
well as a belief in the Incarnation in which the Son of God embraced a human
23 Struck, 264–266.
322 louth
nature and life, not just spiritually, but through the body. This leads John to
suggest, in the last and most developed on his treatises against the iconoclasts,
that:
The Son of God did not become an angelic nature hypostatically; the Son
of God became hypostatically a human nature. Angels do not participate
in, nor do they become sharers in, the divine nature, but in divine activity
and grace; human beings, however, do participate in, and become sharers
of, the divine nature, as many as partake of the holy Body of Christ and
drink his precious Blood; for it is united to the divinity hypostatically, and
the two natures are hypostatically and inseparably united in the Body of
Christ of which we partake, and we share in the two natures, in the body
in a bodily manner, and in the divinity spiritually, or rather in both ways,
not that we have become identical [with God] hypostatically (for we first
subsisted, and then we were united), but through assimilation with the
Body and the Blood.24
The notion that, whereas angels, in virtue of their simplicity, possess the image
of God more purely, while human beings, because they are twofold beings of
soul and body, possess the image of God in a richer way, is found again in St
Gregory Palamas,25 though the precise way in which John develops it in rela-
tion to human participation in the material elements of the Eucharist seems to
be peculiar to the Damascene himself. It seems to me, however, to be a strik-
ing development of the recognition of the value of matter, implicit in Proclus’
justification of symbolism and an invocatory theory of language.
All this seems to me to illustrate the way in which there is often a conver-
gence between Neoplatonic and Christian themes in late antiquity and the
Byzantine period—a convergence that makes it difficult to speak of influence.
For John Damascene’s striking recognition of the way in which being mate-
24 Bonifatius Kotter, ed., John Damascene, Against Those Who Despise Images, III. 26. 44–62.
Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos III (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975), 134; English
translation: Andrew Louth, ed., St John of Damascus, Three Treatises on the Divine Images
(Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 102–103.
25 Robert Sinkewicz, ed., Gregory Palamas, CL Chapters, 62–64. Studies and Texts 83 (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1988), 154–158. And now see Alexandros Chou-
liaras, “The Superiority of Humans over the Angels Due to Participation in the Eucharist:
Is St Gregory Palamas Based on St John Damascene,” Sobornost 40:2 (2018): 31–42, and his
unpublished Ph.D. thesis: The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: The Image of God, the
Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 2019).
rial offers human beings the possibility of communion with God that would
be denied them if they were purely spiritual beings, and is, indeed, denied the
purely spiritual angelic beings, is itself based on the Christian doctrine of cre-
ation and especially the Incarnation of the Son of God in a human soul and
body. Proclus’ understanding of the dignity of matter because of its paradox-
ical closeness to, or sympathy with, the One leads in a similar direction, but
has metaphysical roots that bear some, but not really any close, analogy to the
doctrine of creation, and none that I can see with the doctrine of the Incarna-
tion. Nevertheless, Proclus’ doctrine of symbolism and the related understand-
ing of language as invocatory, rather than mimetic, is clearly something that
Dionysius incorporated eagerly into his own doctrine of the symbolism and the
divine names, and indeed his understanding of the invocatory nature of prayer,
especially in the Eucharist.
This leads to a final observation, relevant to the topic of individual and litur-
gical piety in Dionysius the Areopagite. The doctrine of symbolism that Peter
Struck has identified in antiquity and late antiquity, not least in the tradition
that culminates in Proclus, has further entailments. In finding a use of language
that does not function simply rationally by conveying and refining a realm of
concepts but rather in an invocatory way enabling participation in the realities
celebrated, we are opening up a dimension of language that discovers value
in the use of words, that goes beyond their role in signifying concepts. Some-
thing of this is already implicit in what we have already explored in relation
to the apophatic/kataphatic distinction and also the role of, especially, unlike
symbolism. Reflection on this leads us to two aspects of human understanding
that are often ignored or undervalued: the tacit, and a use of words that is sug-
gestive, lateral, rather than directly significative.26 As Rowan Williams has put
it in a recent article,
This way of reading and absorbing includes what is usually referred to as

“typological” interpretation (the figures of the Hebrew Scriptures being
taken up to illuminate the narrative of the new covenant), but it is not just
this: it is a habit of listening for connections, backwards and forwards, of
all sorts. And all such interweavings of the sacred text take it for granted
that patient immersion in the whole range of scriptural language will
uncover connections that are not “decodable” by the usual standards of
critical scholarship. But this does not mean that they are arbitrary and
26 Both of these I explored long ago in my Discerning the Mystery (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1983), chapters on “Tradition and the Tacit,” “Return to Allegory” (pp. 73–95).
324 louth
fanciful associations; they occur with a shared and continuing practice,

and they generate new dimensions for future readings.27
It seems to me that it is precisely this recognition of these further dimensions

of language, opened up by their existing in a tradition defined by the repeated
use of language and imagery in the celebration of the liturgical offices in the
broadest sense, that enables us to grasp the point at which individual and litur-
gical piety intersect. It is something of which Dionysius seems to have had a
profound awareness, even if it is overlooked or denounced by certain canons
of supposedly critical scholarship.
27 Rowan Williams, “Aeolian Harmonics: Murray Cox and Geoffrey Rowell,” International
Journal of the Study of the Christian Church 18 (2018): 114–123 at 119.
chapter 16
Ps.-Ps.-Dionysius on the Dormition of the Virgin

Mary: The Armenian Letter of Dionysius to Titus
In the third chapter of On the Divine Names, Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite

famously refers to an assembly of the apostles, himself included, gathered
together to behold “that mortal body, that source of life, which bore God [ἐπὶ
τὴν θέαν τοῦ ζωαρχικοῦ καὶ θεοδόχου σώματος συνεληλύθαμεν]. James, the brother
of God, was there. So too was Peter, that summit, that chief of all those who
speak of God.”1 With this notice, it would seem, Ps.-Dionysius provides one
of the earliest patristic witnesses to the ancient traditions about the Dormi-
tion and Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is true, one should note, that over
the past century a handful of scholars has disputed this interpretation of “the
body that bore God” as the body of the Theotokos Mary, at the time of her
passing from this world. Perhaps the first to propose an alternative interpre-
tation was Martin Jugie, who argued that the “body” to which the author here
refers is most likely the Eucharist, rather than Mary, and only in later centuries
did writers (incorrectly, in his opinion) come to identify this body with the
Virgin.2 Yet as I have noted elsewhere, such an interpretation was undoubt-
edly determined—indeed, necessitated—by Jugie’s convictions regarding the
Virgin Mary’s immortality. This position was effectively mandated by the Vat-
ican’s preparations at that time—largely under his direction—to declare the
Assumption of the Virgin a dogma of the Roman Catholic faith on the basis
of her lack of Original Sin (according to the dogma of the Immaculate Con-
ception), which would entail her corresponding lack of mortality.3 Much more
recently, István Perczel has proposed that this passage should instead be under-
stood as a reference to the Council of Chalcedon and the participation of the
1 Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names III.2 (Beate Regina Suchla, ed., Corpus
Dionysiacum, 2 vols., vol. 1, Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite De divinis nominibus, PTS 33 [Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1990], 141; trans. Colm Luibhéid and Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: The
Complete Works, Classics of Western Spirituality [New York: Paulist Press, 1987], 70).
2 Martin Jugie, La mort et l’assomption de la Sainte Vierge, étude historico-doctrinale, ST 114 (Vat-
ican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1944), 99–101.
3 See Stephen J. Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption,
OECS (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 9–17.

326 shoemaker
author of the Dionysiac corpus therein.4 Nevertheless, Perczel’s hypotheses are

quite convoluted and idiosyncratic, and they have not been widely received.
Instead of the Theotokos, Perczel would have us understand “the body that
bore God” as a term that refers to “the inner contemplation of the Christolog-
ical mystery,” an unlikely reading in my opinion, and Archbishop Alexander’s
brief summary of Perczel’s further arguments makes their improbability quite
clear simply in their elaboration.5
Despite these exceptions, the interpretation of this gathering of apostles
around the body of the one who bore God has long been understood by the
majority of scholars as indeed a reference to the Virgin’s Dormition and her
funeral.6 Such a conclusion is certainly warranted by the fact that at the very
moment when the Dionysiac corpus was composed, a diverse panoply of tradi-
tions about the end of Mary’s life was circulating widely throughout the eastern
Mediterranean world. Although these Dormition traditions are certainly much
earlier, composed in all probability during the third and fourth centuries (if not
quite possibly older still), toward the end fifth century, these diverse narratives
and the topic of Mary’s death and burial suddenly became prominent topics of
Christian discourse.7 Although Ben Schomakers maintains that the scene from
On Divine Names should not be identified with Mary’s Dormition since such
traditions originated only after the production of the Dionysiac corpus, clearly
4 See esp. István Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and the Pseudo-Dormition of the
Holy Virgin,” Le Muséon 125 (2012): 55–97.
5 Ibid., 76.; Alexander Golitzin, Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita, CS 250
(Collegeville, Minn.: Cistercian Publications, 2013), xxix–xxxi. Ben Schomakers, “An Unknown
Elements of Theology? On Proclus as the Model for the Hierotheos in the Dionysian Cor-
pus,” in Danielle Layne and David D. Butorac, eds., Proclus and His Legacy (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 2017), 183–198, 195–197 similarly judges Perczel’s hypothesis “speculative and in
all cases not convincing.” I would bring the same judgment, however, to Schomakers’ alter-
native proposal that the scene represents instead “metaphorical meeting of theologians or
theologically inspired thinkers who, though living in different places and even in different
periods, were finding each other in discussing the same theme.” Tuomo Lankila’s article in
the same volume as Schomakers’ largely follows Perczel and does not add much new to
the interpretation of this scene: Tuomo Lankila, “A Crypto-Pagan Reading of the Figure of
Hierotheus and the ‘Dormition’ Passage in the Corpus Areopagiticum,” in Danielle Layne
and David D. Butorac, eds., Proclus and His Legacy (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 175–
182.
6 E.g., Andrew Louth, Denys, the Areopagite (London: G. Chapman, 1989), 102; Golitzin, Mys-
tagogy, 34; and most recently Byron MacDougall, “Hierotheus at the ‘Dormition’: Pseudo-
Dionysius on his Teacher’s Rhetorical Performance in On Divine Names,” JECS 28.2 (2020),
forthcoming.
7 See Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions, 9–77; Stephen J. Shoemaker, Mary in Early Christian Faith
and Devotion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 100–165.
the armenian letter of dionysius to titus 327
this is not in fact the case.8 To the contrary, these traditions are not only signifi-
cantly older than the Dionysiac corpus, but they had recently come into vogue,
it would seem, just as On Divine Names was being written.
Moreover, the origins of these narratives seem to be linked specifically with
early Christian Palestine and with Jerusalem in particular, and their oldest sur-
viving witnesses are Syriac manuscripts copied in the late fifth century, which
transmit versions that were translated from even earlier Greek models.9 In the
case of one of the most widely circulated and influential narratives, the so-
called Six Books Apocryphon, this Palestinian milieu is evidenced by Epiphanius
of Salamis, who seems to have encountered this narrative’s traditions before
moving to Cyprus, while he was still living in Palestine during the first half of
the fourth century.10 Furthermore, the Six Books Apocryphon (with help from
Epiphanius) additionally bears witness to the observance of three annual com-
memorations in Mary’s honor, presumably among Christians in fourth-century
Palestine.11 And although Jerusalem knew a celebration of the Memory of Mary
by the early fifth century, this 15 August feast came to be identified as a memo-
rial of her death and burial only somewhat later—sometime before the middle
of the sixth century.12
8 Schomakers, “Unknown Elements,” 195–197: “First is the question whether Dionysius actu-
ally staged a ‘dormition of the virgin’ scene, a scene which has no biblical reference and is
somewhat shadowy, perhaps reflecting a tradition originating later than the composition
of the Dionysian Corpus.”
9 Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions, 32–57; idem, Mary, 129, 144, 149, 152.
10 Stephen J. Shoemaker, “Epiphanius of Salamis, the Kollyridians, and the Early Dormition
Narratives: The Cult of the Virgin in the Later Fourth Century,” JECS 16 (2008): 371–401;
idem, Mary, 144–165.
11 Shoemaker, “Epiphanius of Salamis”; idem, Mary, 130–145; idem, “Marian Liturgies and
Devotion in Early Christianity,” in Sarah Jane Boss, ed., Mary: The Complete Resource (Lon-
don: Continuum Press, 2007), 130–145; idem, “The Cult of the Virgin in the Fourth Cen-
tury: A Fresh Look at Some Old and New Sources,” in Chris Maunder, ed., The Origins
of the Cult of the Virgin Mary (London: Burns & Oates, 2008), 71–87; idem, “Apocrypha
and Liturgy in the Fourth Century: The Case of the ‘Six Books’ Dormition Apocryphon,” in
James H. Charlesworth and Lee Martin McDonald, eds., Jewish and Christian Scriptures:
The Function of “Canonical” and “Non-canonical” Religious Texts (London: T&T Clark, 2010),
153–163.
12 The 15 August feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos is attested in the Jerusalem Geor-
gian Lectionary, whose contents reflect ritual practice in Jerusalem in the sixth century.
Hymns for the feast are also present in the Jerusalem Georgian Chantbook, whose cal-
endar seems to date this collection to the middle of the sixth century. See Stig Frøyshov,
“The Georgian Witness to the Jerusalem Liturgy: New Sources and Studies,” in Bert Groen,
Steven Hawkes-Teeples, and Stefanos Alexopoulos, eds., Inquiries into Eastern Christian
Worship. Selected Papers of the Second International Congress of the Society of Oriental
Liturgies, Rome, 17–21 September 2008 (Leuven: Peeters, 2012), 227–267, 246–248; Peter
328 shoemaker
Since the vast majority of scholars agree in assigning the Dionysiac corpus an
origin in Syro-Palestine most likely sometime around the year 500 CE, we find
that in fact this author’s milieu was quite dense with traditions about the Dor-
mition and burial of the Virgin Mary.13 Likewise, Archbishop Alexander also
proposes that in this setting the author was especially influenced by a range
of writings from the Syriac Christian tradition.14 Therefore it stands to reason
that we might find some mention of the Dormition traditions in this corpus,
and accordingly this would seem to be the most probable and straightforward
reading of On the Divine Names III.2 based on the context of its production. It
is certainly significant that this interpretation is confirmed by the earliest com-
mentary on the Dionysiac corpus, the Scholia on the Dionysian writings by John
of Scythopolis. In this commentary, which John wrote sometime between 537
and 543 while bishop of Scythopolis (modern Beit Sheʾan) in Palestine,15 he
notes of the passage in question that “by ‘source of life which bore God’ [the
author] means the body of the holy Theotokos who at that time fell asleep
[κοιμηθείσης].”16 Thus, within a few decades of the Dionysian Corpus’ initial
appearance, we find clear evidence that as the next generation took up these
writings, they understood this passage, like most modern scholars, as a refer-
ence to the Virgin’s Dormition and burial.
This passage from On Divine Names provides the literary occasion for the text
translated in the appendix below. This brief Dormition narrative purports to be
a letter from Dionysius the Areopagite to Titus. Undoubtedly this is meant to
be the same Titus who was imagined as the recipient of the pseudo-Pauline
Jeffery, “The Sunday Office of Seventh-Century Jerusalem in the Georgian Chantbook

(Iadgari): A Preliminary Report,” Studia Liturgica 21 (1991): 52–75, 57; idem, “The Earliest
Christian Chant Repertory Recovered: The Georgian Witnesses to Jerusalem Chant,” Jour-
nal of the American Musicological Society 47 (1994): 1–38, 14; Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions,
120–124.
13 See esp. the discussion in Paul Rorem and John C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis and
the Dionysian Corpus: Annotating the Areopagite, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1998), 9–11. This milieu was first identified by Hugo Koch and Josef
Stiglmayr at the end of the 19th century, and it remains effectively the scholarly con-
sensus today: Charles M. Stang, Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite:
“No Longer I” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 27. See also Kevin Corrigan and
L. Michael Harrington, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite,” in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition): https://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/sum2018/entries/pseudo‑dionysius‑areopagite.
14 Golitzin, Mystagogy, 324–360, 379.
15 Rorem and Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis, esp. 39 and 272.
16 John of Scythopolis (Ps.-Maximus the Confessor), Scholia on the Divine Names 3 (PG 4, 236;
trans. Rorem and Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis, 199–200).
letter to Titus, since in this letter “Paul” remarks that he had left Titus behind
on Crete to complete the establishment of Christianity on the island (Tit 1.5),
and our letter’s Titus is identified as the bishop of Crete. Thus, the author of our
letter writes in Dionysius’ name in order to elaborate on this tradition from the
writings of Ps.-Dionysius, explaining the events of Mary’s departure from this
life to his fellow disciple of Paul, Titus, who must have been unable, it would
seem, to attend the Virgin’s funeral for himself. The letter was almost certainly
composed originally in Greek, although presently it survives only in Armenian
translation, where it is preserved in five known manuscripts: one at the Biblio-
thèque nationale in Paris, two at the Matenadaran in Yerevan, and two at the
Mekhitarist monastery in Vienna.17 In 1887, Paul Vetter published a German
translation of the Paris manuscript, and subsequently the Armenian text from
this manuscript was published in a collection of studies edited by J. Dashian.18
The other four manuscripts remain unedited.
The version translated below, however, is not from any of these five manu-
scripts but was taken from a sixth manuscript, whose whereabouts are pres-
ently unknown. In 1874 Garegin Sruandzteantsʽ published this narrative along
with a variety of other texts in a volume printed in Constantinople.19 Accord-
ing to Sruandzteantsʽ, he copied the text from a manuscript book called the
Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite in 1867 in the monastery of Surb Kara-
pet, located 30 kilometers northwest of the city of Mush (today Muş).20 In the
nineteenth century, Mush, which sits some 80 kilometers to the west of Lake
Van, and the province of the same name were an important center of Arme-
17 For more information on the original language and these manuscripts, see Simon C. Mim-
ouni, Dormition et Assomption de Marie: Histoire des traditions anciennes, ThH 98 (Paris:
Beauchesne, 1995), 337–338, n. 77.
18 Paul Vetter, “Das apocryphe Schreiben Dionysius des Areopagiten an Titus über die Auf-
nahme Mariä,” Theologische Quartalschrift 69 (1887): 133–138; Paul Vetter, “Անվաւերական
Թուղթ Դիոնեսիուի Արիսպագացւոյ առ Տիտոս վասն ննջման Մարեմայ (The Apoc-
ryphal Letter of Dionysius the Areopagite to Titus concerning the Dormition of Mary),”
in J. Dashian, ed., Հայկական աշխատսիրութիւնք (Haykakan ashkhatsirutʽiwnkʽ [Arme-
nian Studies]), Azgayin matenadaran 17 (Vienna: Mkhitʽarean Tparan, 1895), 11–17. The
French translation by Barnabé Meistermann, Le tombeau de la Sainte Vierge à Jérusalem
(Jérusalem: P.P. Franciscains, 1903), 120–125 is clearly a translation of Vetter’s German
translation.
19 Garegin Sruandzteantsʽ, “Թուղթ Դիոնէսիոսի Արիսպագացւոյ (The Letter of Dionysius
the Areopagite),” in Հնոց եւ նորոց պատմութիւն վասն Դաւթի եւ Մովսէսի Խորենացւոյ
(Hnotsʽ ew norotsʽ patmutʽiwn vasn Dawtʽi ew Movsesi Khorenatsʽwoy [History of the Old and
New concerning David and Moses Khorenatsi]) (Constantinople: Tpagrutʽiwn E.M. Tnte-
sean, 1874), 110–115.
20 I thank Prof. Sergio La Porta for his help in obtaining this information.
330 shoemaker
nian culture prior to the Armenian Genocide. Perhaps the manuscript was lost
in the devastating eradication of lives and culture from eastern Anatolia in the
summer of 1915, although it may possibly yet be located. This manuscript’s pres-
ence in Mush is interesting, however, since we know that a second copy of this
apocryphal letter was also preserved nearby at the Arakelots Monastery, 11 kilo-
meters to the southwest of Mush. This manuscript, now Yerevan Matenadaran
MS 7729, is one of the most famous Armenian manuscripts, the Homiliary of
Mush.21 It would appear that, for whatever reason, this apocryphal letter was
relatively well attested in this region.
Although the precise nature of this missing manuscript of the “Theology of
Dionysius the Areopagite” remains a bit of a mystery, the other manuscripts
transmitting this narrative are, like the Mush Homiliary, collections of read-
ings for various annual liturgical feasts. In these collections the Letter from
Dionysius to Titus is presented, unsurprisingly, as a reading for the feast of the
Dormition of the Theotokos, on 15 August.22 It certainly has a typical style for
such an occasion: it is brief, the narrative details are limited and to the point,
and the discourse is flowery and encomiastic. Indeed, the narrative content can
be briefly related as follows. When the time came for Mary to depart from this
world, the apostles were gathered to her in Jerusalem. In the presence of the
apostles and assembled believers, she handed her soul over into the hands of
her son, who took it to the heavenly Jerusalem. The apostles then took care
of the appropriate funeral rites and buried her body in Gethsemane, waiting
there for three days while angels sang at the tomb. After a while, the angels
suddenly stopped their singing. One of the apostles, we are told, was absent
from the initial gathering to the Virgin before her departure, and he came
only later. He implored the other apostles to open the tomb so that he could
behold her body. They did so and discovered that the tomb was empty, realiz-
ing that when the angelic singing stopped, Mary’s body had been transferred
to heaven.
This Armenian letter thus fits into a broader category of early Dormition nar-
ratives known as the “late apostle traditions.” Although Michel van Esbroeck for
some reason assigned all of the various late apostle narratives (with one excep-
tion) to the Bethlehem tradition, any points of contact with this group are in
fact extremely minimal, and consequently these traditions are best regarded as
21 See Michel van Esbroeck, “Description du répertoire de l’ homiliaire de Muš (Matenadaran

7729),” REArm 18 (1984): 237–280.
22 See Michel van Esbroeck and Ugo Zanetti, “La manuscrit Érévan 993: inventaire des
pièces,” REArm 12 (1977), 123–167 at 157; van Esbroeck, “Description du répertoire de
l’homiliaire de Muš,” 274.
group of independent narratives, often quite different from one another, that
share the common theme of the late apostle.23 According to this literary tra-
dition, one of the apostles was delayed in making the journey to Jerusalem for
Mary’s Dormition. Consequently, he arrived only sometime after her burial had
already taken place. This belated apostle then usually asks to see the remains
of the Virgin for himself. At his request, the apostles together reopen Mary’s
sealed tomb. When they look into the tomb, however, they do not find Mary’s
body, which is understood to mean that it has been miraculously transferred
to heaven. In most of these narratives, the apostles also discover certain relics
inside the tomb, initially Mary’s funeral robe, and in later traditions, her gir-
dle as well. These garments were, of course, revered Marian relics venerated in
Constantinople from the early middle ages onward, and they served as impor-
tant symbols of Mary’s special bond with the imperial capital (at least in the
minds of its inhabitants).24 Although the discovery of these relics is not always
an element of the late apostle tradition, it would appear that the opening of
Mary’s empty tomb as described in these legends provided a ready device to
explain their invention.
Perhaps the most famous witness to this tradition of the late apostle is the
so-called “Euthymiac History,” an excerpt from a now lost text, the Euthymiac
History, which is preserved in John of Damascus’ second homily on the Dor-
mition.25 Near the end of this homily, John introduces a citation from “the
23 The late apostle traditions are discussed in Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions, 67–71. See also
Michel van Esbroeck, “Les textes littéraires sur l’assomption avant le Xe siècle,” in Fran-
çois Bovon, ed., Les actes apocryphes des apôtres (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981), 265–285,
272–273.
24 Regarding these relics and their early history in Constantinople, see especially Stephen
J. Shoemaker, “The Cult of Fashion: The Earliest Life of the Virgin and Constantinople’s
Marian Relics,” DOP 62 (2008): 53–74.
25 Here I use “Euthymiac History” in reference to the passage cited in John’s homily and
Euthymiac History to describe the now lost larger work from which this excerpt was taken.
A critical text of the “Euthymiac History” as preserved in John of Damascus’ Homily on
the Dormition II 18 may be found in Bonifaz Kotter, ed., Die Schriften des Johannes von
Damaskos, 5 vols. PTS 7, 12, 17, 22, 29 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1969–1988), 5.536–539.
Pierre Voulet, ed., Homélies sur la nativité et la dormition, SC 80 (Paris: Cerf, 1961), 169–175
is basically a corrected reprint of the text from the Patrologia Graeca (PG 96, 748–752). For
an English translation of the citation, see Brian E. Daley, On the Dormition of Mary: Early
Patristic Homilies (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 224–226. Note also
that the Arabic Dormition narrative edited in Michel van Esbroeck, “Un témoin indirect de
l’Histoire Euthymiaque dans une lecture arabe pour l’ Assomption,” Parole de l’ Orient 6–7
(1975–1976): 479–491 is not as closely linked with the “Euthymiac History” as van Esbroeck
indicates. This narrative is best understood as yet another example of the late apostle tra-
dition.
332 shoemaker
Euthymiac History, book 3, chapter 40,” which he seems to have taken from a
no longer extant Life of Euthymios (d. 473), the founder of coenobitic monasti-
cism in Palestine. Despite widespread agreement among many earlier schol-
ars that this passage should be understood as a later interpolation to John’s
homily, as I have argued elsewhere, it is to the contrary almost certainly an
original element of John’s homily.26 The passage cited from the Euthymiac His-
tory focuses even more directly on the clothing relics and their invention and
transfer to Constantinople than either the late apostle or even the events of the
Dormition themselves. John’s quotation begins with Pulcheria and Marcian,
who have recently constructed the church in Blachernai. Desiring to endow
their new shrine to the Virgin with an impressive Marian relic, they are said to
have used the occasion of the Council of Chalcedon to approach bishop Juve-
nal of Jerusalem with a request for Mary’s bodily remains to be transferred to
Constantinople for deposition in the church of Blachernai, where they could
protect the imperial capital.
Juvenal responds by explaining that, despite the silence of the scriptures on
the matter, according to an ancient and revered tradition, Mary passed from
this world in miraculous fashion. The apostles assembled to witness her death,
after which they saw to her burial. Yet one of their company was delayed: an
unnamed27 apostle arrived three days after her burial but still wished to ven-
erate her holy body one last time. When the apostles reopened the tomb to
grant the late apostle’s request, they were surprised to discover that the body
was gone: all they found within were her grave clothes (ἐντάφια). The Euthymiac
History then identifies several of those who were present for these events, citing
as its source the famous passage from Ps.-Dionysius, On the Divine Names 3.2.
After hearing these things, the imperial couple asked Juvenal to send them the
26 Shoemaker, “The Cult of Fashion,” 66–72. The authenticity of the quotation is also main-
tained in Alexander Kazhdan, A History of Byzantine Literature (650–850) (Athens:
National Hellenic Research Foundation, Institute for Byzantine Research, 1999), 82.
27 In both the PG and Voulet’s edition (which essentially reproduces the PG), this apostle
is identified as Thomas: PG 96, 749A; Voulet, Homélies sur la nativité, 170. Nevertheless,
Kotter’s critical edition, which I follow here, does not provide a name for the late apos-
tle, and somewhat surprisingly, there is no indication of any name, Thomas or otherwise,
in the apparatus: Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, 5.539. According to
Jugie, the apostle is not named in the earliest manuscript, copied in 890: see Jugie, La
mort et l’assomption, 162, n. 2. Wenger also reports that in the independent version of the
“Euthymiac History,” preserved in a Sinai manuscript from the eighth or ninth century,
the apostle is similarly unnamed: Antoine Wenger, L’ Assomption de la T.S. Vierge dans la
tradition byzantine du VIe au Xe siècle; études et documents, Archives de l’ Orient chrétien
5 (Paris: Institut français d’études byzantines, 1955), 137, n. 3.
holy coffer (σορός) containing Mary’s funeral garments (ἱμάτια), and when he
did, Pulcheria and Marican deposited the relic in the church of the Theotokos
at Blachernai.
The Euthymiac History and its account of the late apostle are extremely dif-
ficult to date, and all that we can be certain of is that they were composed
sometime in advance of John’s Dormition homilies, which were delivered most
likely sometime between 730–750.28 It would appear, however, that the late
apostle tradition first entered circulation sometime during the sixth century, as
witnessed by an Armenian homily on the Dormition attributed (falsely) to John
Chrysostom. Although it is unlikely that this homily is as early as van Esbroeck
proposes (the fourth century), there are signs that the lost Greek original prob-
ably was composed in the sixth century.29 Another early Dormition narrative
including the late apostle tradition is the Georgian Transitus of Ps.-Basil, whose
liturgical traditions date composition of its Greek original sometime during
the seventh century.30 Yet neither of these narratives has anything to say about
the fate of Mary’s grave clothes after their discovery, nor are there any hints of
their veneration. The earliest version of the late apostle tradition, as reflected in
these two texts, forged no connections between these garments and either Con-
stantinople or the church of Blachernai. And while both texts identify the late
apostle as Thomas, only the Transitus of Ps.-Basil refers to the events described
in On the Divine Names 3.2. Roughly contemporary with Ps.-Basil’s Transitus is
the earliest extant Life of the Virgin, a text attributed to Maximus the Confes-
sor that also combines the tradition of the late apostle, whom it identifies as
Thomas, with the invention of the Virgin’s clothing relics and On the Divine
Names.31 While this Life’s attribution to Maximus may be false, it seems clear
that the text was composed most likely in the seventh century, and the loca-
tion of its production was in the monasteries of the Judean Desert, perhaps
Mar Saba, indeed, the very same context that provided the Euthymiac History
28 Daley, On the Dormition of Mary, 21.

29 Ps.-John Chrysostom, Homily on the Dormition 15, 17. [Michel van Esbroeck, “Une homé-
lie arménienne sur la dormition attribuée à Chrysostome,” OC 74 (1990): 199–233, 218–219
(Arm) and 231–232 (Fr)]. On the sixth century date, see Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions,
69–70; Mimouni, Dormition et Assomption, 334–337.
30 Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions, 71, 132–140. See also Mimouni, Dormition et Assomption,
315–316.
31 Maximus the Confessor, Life of the Virgin 108, 117–118 [Michel van Esbroeck, ed., Maxime le
Confesseur: Vie de la Vierge, 2 vols. CSCO 478–479. Scriptores Iberici 21–22 (Leuven: Peeters,
1986), 138–140, 150–152 (Geor) and 94, 102–103 (Fr); trans. Stephen J. Shoemaker, ed., Max-
imus the Confessor, The Life of the Virgin: Translated, with an Introduction and Notes (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 134–135, 141–142.]
334 shoemaker
and John of Damascus’ “Euthymiac History.”32 Nevertheless, this Life of the Vir-
gin also does not link the garments discovered through the intervention of the
late apostle with Constantinople’s relics. This achievement seems to belong to
the Euthymiac History.
How, then, does our Ps.-Ps.-Dionysiac letter fit into this broader tradition? It
shares with what appear to be the earliest witnesses the absence of any con-
nection with Constantinople’s relics. Likewise, it joins the homily attributed to
Basil and the earliest Life of the Virgin in linking the late apostle tradition with
the gathering of the apostles in On the Divine Names 3.2. Yet in contrast to all of
the other late apostle traditions that I have seen, this one fails entirely to men-
tion the discovery of any clothing whatsoever. The reopening of her tomb three
days after her burial serves merely to witness to the miraculous removal of her
body from this world following its interment. Could it be then that the absence
of this element might indicate a particularly ancient version of the late apos-
tle tradition? Perhaps, but at the same time these relics may have been elided
for liturgical efficiency in a context where devotion to Constantinople’s Marian
relics was, for whatever reason, not particularly vigorous.
One of the most peculiar elements of this apocryphon is its elaboration on
the miraculous assembly of the apostles with the comment, “where there is
decomposition of the flesh, there also the eagles will gather.” Certainly, there is
nothing surprising in likening the apostles to eagles, but identifying the body
of the Virgin, to which they were gathered, as decomposing flesh is nothing
short of shocking. Might this jarring comparison suggest a relatively early com-
position, sometime before ideas of the immaculate purity of the Virgin’s flesh
gained widespread currency in Christian discourse? Possibly, but that would
seemingly require a very early date. Already by the later second century we see
in the Protevangelium of James that the idea of her unique physical purity had
come into circulation. Instead, we should probably view the passage as sim-
ply an awkward comparison introduced out of a desire to reference, somewhat
obliquely, the related saying of Jesus: “Wherever the corpse is, there the vul-
tures will gather” (Matt 24:28). Why the apostles were made into eagles in the
adaptation of this saying while the Virgin’s body became decaying flesh is cer-
tainly a mystery. In any case, without any question this narrative must have
32 See most recently Stephen J. Shoemaker, “The (Ps?-)Maximus Life of the Virgin and the
Marian Literature of Middle Byzantium,” JTS 67 (2016): 115–142. See also Stephen J. Shoe-
maker, “The Georgian Life of the Virgin attributed to Maximus the Confessor: Its Authen-
ticity(?) and Importance,” in Alexey Muraviev and Basil Lourié, eds., Mémorial R.P. Michel
van Esbroeck, S.J., Scrinium 2 (St. Petersburg: Vizantinorossika, 2006), 307–328; idem, “The
Cult of Fashion”; idem, (Ps?-)Maximus the Confessor, The Life of the Virgin.
been produced after the composition of the Dionysian Corpus itself. Thus, it
was probably written sometime after 550, and we cannot identify a terminus ad
quem with any certainty, other than the date of its earliest manuscript (1194).33
Appendix: The Letter of Dionysius the Areopagite, the First Bishop

of the City of the Athenians, Which He Wrote in Response to the
Letter of Titus, the Bishop of Crete, Regarding the Dormition of the
Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary34
Let it be known to your brotherliness, O noble Titus, since at the time when
the Theotokos, longing with spiritual love, was preparing to go forth from this
world and the things of the world, that is, from the earthly Jerusalem, and to
enter into the tabernacle of light of the celestial Jerusalem, ever inseparable
from us by death, according to the inner humanity, then the company of the
holy apostles, according to a sign in the heavens, by the sublime will of God’s
command, immediately assembled in an instant from all the nations where
they had been allotted to preach the gospel of salvation. They found them-
selves gathered together in unity to the truly holy things—as the saying goes,
“where there is decomposition of the flesh, there also the eagles will gather”
(cf. Matt 24:28; Luke 17:37)—embracing around the most exalted virginal body.
So then at that time the twelve divinely learned, apostolic radiances assem-
bled before it. As all the faithful peoples gathered around, and the holy hosts
departed from them all, she reverently and swiftly raised up her most holy and
unapproachable hands into the heights with intercession and prayers to God,
gazing longingly at the one who was born from her, our God and her son. With
great hope she offered as sweetly fragrant incense her all-holy soul into the
hands of the Lord. And thus was she raised up to the angelic hosts with great
adornment, like a flash of lightening, into the brilliant, everlasting glory of the
heavenly Jerusalem.
Now then at that time, with weeping tears of lamentation more than hopeful
gladness and joyful noise, the holy apostles and all the faithful crowd who had
gathered around adorned the body that received God, which had lived above
the ordinary law, according to the rites of the departed, with inspired singing,
and were declaring the dwelling place of God with flowery discourse, as was
33 Frédéric Macler, Catalogue des manuscrits arméniens et géorgiens de la Bibliothèque natio-

nale (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1908), 48–54.
34 Again I thank Prof. Sergio La Porta for looking over my translation and suggesting a num-
ber of significant improvements.
336 shoemaker
appropriate for the circumstances. And singing psalms, the apostles, strength-
ened by God, raised up with their arms the truly most holy body, the mother
of Light and treasure, the source of incorruptible life for humankind. And as a
sign for all, the Savior suddenly descended from heaven and inflamed the one
tempered by God with sparks of fire. They laid her in the place called Geth-
semane, listening for three days to the angelic voices singing psalms over the
most holy burial, and then the singing stopped.
Therefore, in the faithfulness of these deeds, a certain one of them, the holy
apostles, was found to be missing at the time of their assembly. He came later
and persuaded the apostles to show him with his own eyes the impregnable
treasury, the sublime body of the most blessed Virgin, obliging them then to ful-
fill their brother’s wish. When they opened the tomb, they found it empty and
devoid of the holy body. Then they understood the meaning of this: that when
the angels stopped singing the psalms, the holy body had in fact been trans-
ferred, supernaturally raised up by the fiery host to a venerable and luminous
place of glory, which he alone knows who is the God of wonders, completely
hidden from the sensible world. To him be glory unto the ages, Amen.
chapter 17
The “Platonic” Character of Gregory of Nyssa’s

Psychology: The Old Canon
Michel René Barnes
1 Scholarly Characterizations of Gregory’s Thought
For more than a hundred years Gregory of Nyssa’s psychology has been the
object of much academic attention. Gregory’s general anthropology has been
regarded not only the cornerstone of his distinctive soteriology, but also the
foundation of his emphasis on personal union with God, that is, his mysticism.
The majority of scholars who have treated Gregory’s psychology in particu-
lar have been concerned with the sources of that psychology.1 This concern
has not been simply to identify precedents or parallels to Gregory’s thought:
the question of philosophical influence upon Gregory’s psychology has been
the primary arena for describing the fundamental character of Gregory’s rela-
tionship to pagan philosophy overall. The burden of this description has been
determining whether Gregory’s doctrines, and whether the theological syn-
thesis he helped author, was “corrupted” by the philosophy he had obviously
assimilated. The foundational scholarly questions of Gregory at the beginning
of the twentieth century were To what extent was Gregory’s anthropology Pla-
tonic? and If Gregory’s anthropology is substantially Christian, what does he give
us to work with? Those questions—with their presuppositions and motives—
remain alive today in scholarship on Gregory.
One method has remained constant in all the influential modern accounts
of Gregory’s psychology: to characterize or judge the relationship between Gre-
gory’s Christian theology with the philosophy of his day by identifying his pos-
1 Recent scholarship on Gregory of Nyssa’s status as a “Platonist” would include: Enrico Peroli, Il
Platonismo e l’antropologia filosofica di Gregorio di Nissa (Rome: Vita e Pensiero, 1993); Álvaro
César Pestana, “Platao e Gregorio de Nissa,” Letras Classicas 2 (1998): 83–114; John M. Rist, “On
the Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa,”Hermathena 169 (2000): 129–152; Hubertus Drobner, “Gre-
gory of Nyssa as Philosopher: De Anima et Resurrectione and De Hominis Opificio,”Dionysius
17 (2000): 69–101; Maciej Manikowski, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Neoplatonic Philosophi-
cal Tradition,” in Agnieszka Kijewska, ed., Being Or Good?: Metamorphoses of Neoplatonism
(Lubin: Wydawnictwo KUL, 2004), 185–197.

338 barnes
sible philosophical sources.2 Karl Gronau’s suggestion that Gregory was depen-
dent upon Posidonius3 was interpreted by Harold Cherniss4 as distancing Gre-
gory from his fundamental Platonism, a Platonism which frequently seemed
to Cherniss to take precedence over Gregory’s Christianity. Cherniss rejected
Gronau’s arguments completely.5 For Cherniss, the evidence of Plato’s near
monopoly on Gregory’s use of philosophy was a testimony to Gregory’s funda-
2 I call these scholars the “Old Canon” because they were the generation of scholars who estab-
lished scholarship in America on Gregory of Nyssa. They share a common task: to measure
Gregory as a philosopher—or as a “classicist” (not unlike themselves). Their principal concern
was to determine the identity of Gregory’s philosophical sources—which they conceived to
be either Platonic, Stoic, or “Posidonian.” From a contemporary perspective, the content they
attributed to each philosophical source, the identities of possible sources, as well as their
methodologies, are no longer credible as scholarly conclusions. Nonetheless, these schol-
ars, working in reputable American universities, made Gregory into a bona fide subject of
academic study, and provided the foundation for the explosion of American scholarship on
Gregory in the nineteen fifties and sixties.
3 Karl Gronau, Poseidonios und die Jüdisch-Christliche Genesisexegese (Berlin: Teubner, 1914).
4 Harold Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa, University of California Papers in Clas-
sical Philology 11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1930; reprint: Berkeley: Franklin,
1970).
5 The refutation of the claim by Gronau that Gregory was influenced by Posidonius is usually
considered to be one of Cherniss’ accomplishments in his book on Gregory. However, if one
reads Cherniss’ work in the light of articles published in the twenties by his director, Roger
Jones, Cherniss’ own arguments against Gronau take on a different character. Cherniss him-
self refers to the importance of Jones’ work in the introduction to his bibliography, but few
scholars seem to have pursued the extent of that influence. Jones wrote three articles tak-
ing issue with Gronau’s thesis: the first was a review of Gronau’s Poseidonios book, published
in Classical Philology 12 (1917): 107–110. Jones is quite critical of Gronau’s methods and con-
clusions: concepts which Gronau thinks are Posidonian Jones finds to be at best generally
Stoic, if not simple commonplace. In the course of refuting Gronau Jones offers his own opin-
ions on influences on Gregory: e.g., that Gregory’s belief that the nervous system is the seat
of the mind is from Xenocrates (p. 109). In “Posidonius and Cicero’s Tuscalan Disputations
i.17–81,” Classical Philology 13 (1923): 202–228, Jones attacks the arguments by several scholars
(including Gronau) that Cicero’s work gives us Posidonian doctrine; Gronau had used par-
allels between Gregory’s On the Soul and Resurrection and Cicero’s Tuscalan Disputations to
show the Posidonian origins of Gregory’s doctrines. Finally, Jones wrote “Posidonius and the
Flight of the Mind Through the Universe,” Classical Philology 21 (1926): 97–113. This is Jones’
most interesting piece, published four years before Cherniss’ book. Again the intention is to
refute Gronau’s claim that a theme or concept is Posidonian: this time it is the doctrine that
the mind is free (or uniquely able) to range through the universe. The connection to Gregory
in both Jones’ and Gronau’s minds is given in the first paragraph of Jones’ article: Gronau
claims that Gregory’s found “support for his theory that the soul remains in all the dispersed
elements of the body after death in the fact that even in this life thought is able to view the
heavens and [mentally] reach” the ends of the universe (p. 97). This latter doctrine, which I
have italicized, Gronau claims is Posidonius’. Jones proves that the doctrine is so widespread
by Gregory’s time that no one source could be found, or expected (p. 98).
the “platonic” character of gregory of nyssa’s psychology 339
mental character as a Platonist. John Cavarnos6 did not set Gregory’s Platonism
up in opposition to his Christianity, but he agreed that Gregory’s assimilation
of Platonism was complete. Both Hans Urs von Balthasar7 and Jean Daniélou8
argued against the description of Gregory as a captive to philosophy—whether
this charge was offered by Cherniss or Harnack—by offering alternate sources
for Gregory’s philosophical language (and by containing that influence at the
level of language). Von Balthasar and Daniélou emphasized Gregory’s use of
Stoic and Neoplatonic sources; Daniélou, in particular, explicitly accepted the
hypothesis of some Posidonian influence on Gregory within the broader con-
text of a transformed Platonism.9 By Daniélou’s account, Gregory transformed
philosophy by allegorizing it: turning philosophical concepts into metaphors
as much as all else in creation was, properly understood, transparent to the
Divine.10
The “Ressourcement” reading of Gregory that Daniélou exemplifies is, I
believe, the most widely known and widely influential reading of Gregory:
Gregory’s appropriation of philosophical sources constituted a “transforma-
tion” of the inherent logic of the pagan philosophy, so that while “influence”
remains (e.g., in the form of vocabulary) the substance of the Pagan logic
has been replaced by a truly Scriptural, truly faith-centered, Christian existen-
tial. There are clear scholarly exceptions today to this broad judgment, and
the grounds for finding Gregory’s “transformation” of his Pagan terminology
6 John Cavarnos, The Psychology of Gregory of Nyssa (Ph.D. diss; Harvard University, 1947).
While this dissertation remains unpublished in its original form, Cavarnos has published
portions of it in other forms. I will be working from Cavarnos’ dissertation, but since large
portions of the dissertation appear in this last article, I will include the parallel refer-
ences in this article in parenthesis where possible. An article entitled “Gregory of Nyssa
on the Nature of the Soul,” appeared in Greek Orthodox Theological Review 1 (1955): 133–
141. Cavarnos also published a part of the dissertation as a pamphlet: St Gregory of Nyssa
on the Origin and Destiny of the Soul (Belmont: Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek
Studies, 1956); and an extract from the dissertation formed the basis for Cavarnos’ paper
on “The Relation of Body and Soul in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa,” in Heinrich Dörrie,
ed., Gregor von Nyssa und die Philosophie (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 61–78.
7 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Présence et pensée: essai sur la philosophie religieuse de Grégoire
de Nysse (Paris: Beauchesne, 1942), 63–64.
8 Jean Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique. Essai sur la doctrine spirituelle de Saint
Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Aubier, Éditions Montaigne, 1944), 8 and 63–66.
9 Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique, 67.
10 As Daniélou (Platonisme et théologie mystique, 9) put it: “On peut dire, en somme, que
Grégoire a tout allégorisé, même la philosophie. Le langage platonicien, surtout celui des
mythes, lui offre, en concurrence avec la Bible, un trésor d’ expressions parlantes pour ses
auditeurs et par lesquelles il décrit le mystère unique dont il parle, de la transformation
de l’âme en Jésus-Christ.”
340 barnes
varies greatly among contemporary scholarship. In this article my purpose is

to reveal the original English-language (American) argument over Gregory’s
sources and to give an account of how Gregory’s “Platonism” was established
as a scholarly fact.11 The English-language studies devoted, on the one hand,
to Gregory’s use of philosophy (Cherniss), and, on the other, to Gregory’s psy-
chology (Cavarnos), were emphatic about Gregory’s debt to Plato. Under these
circumstances, one important, lasting effect of Cherniss’ treatment of Gregory
has been to enshrine Platonism as Gregory’s philosophical language of choice.
Cherniss’ description of Gregory’s Platonic enthusiasm has passed into schol-
arly literature, but, as I will show, its effect has typically been to lower the stan-
dards of the criteria by which Gregory is shown to be a Platonist. My purpose
in this article is to show the limitations in these previous accounts of Gregory’s
psychology, and to provide a different description of the character of that psy-
chology and its relationship to his theology.
2 Cherniss’ Methodology
The first thing to be noticed about Cherniss’ argument for Plato’s influence
on Gregory is that it is built upon finding similarities between doctrines in a
Platonic dialogue and specific doctrines given by Gregory in, usually, On the
Resurrection and the Soul, the Canonical Epistle, and On the Making of Man.
Cherniss searches for Plato’s influence by laying a text by Plato beside a text by
Gregory, and he appears to believe that Gregory read Plato with equal direct-
ness and simplicity.12 There is no discussion of the question of either mediating
11 It is important to note that the most substantial treatment during the twentieth century of
Gregory’s Christianized Platonism, Daniélou’s Platonisme et théologie mystique, has never
been translated into English. Some scholars undoubtedly read the French edition; some
others may have received Daniélou’s scholarship through intermediary sources; and per-
haps a few scholars know the Anglophone scholarly tradition and project it onto what, it is
assumed, were Daniélou’s conclusions. In practice, how much American scholarship on
Gregory’s philosophy depended not upon the scarcely available Continental arguments
but upon a potentially independent English-language account?
12 One may compare this neglect of context with, for example, Christopher Stead’s “The Pla-
tonism of Arius,” JTS 15 (1964): 16–31. The very title of Stead’s article invites methodological
comparison with Cherniss’ The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa, as does the fact that both
Stead and Cherniss are scholars trained in philosophy but writing on theological authors
of the patristic period. Stead begins his article with this caveat: “[W]e must not pose this
alternative: was Arius influenced mainly by Plato or by Aristotle? Among philosophers
whom Christians could tolerate, the choice lay between Platonists who accepted, and
Platonists who denounced, the contribution of Aristotle or of the Stoics” (Stead, “The Pla-
sources or interpretations between Plato and Gregory, and there is no substan-

tial mention of any possible source other than the Platonic dialogue them-
selves.13 Potential mediating sources such as handbooks are mentioned primar-
ily in a pejorative fashion.14 When Cherniss argues for Gregory’s Platonism, he
means nothing less than Gregory’s direct knowledge of Plato’s texts (in their
entirety) and the direct influence of those texts upon Gregory’s philosophy.15
For example, Cherniss offers Gregory’s understanding of the soul’s ὁρμή or
μέρη as a proof that Gregory’s psychology was Platonist, and that he had devel-
oped his own understanding of Plato by his own reading of the Republic and the
Phaedrus, independent of any handbooks and by reading the originals.16 Gre-
gory’s “constant amalgamation” of the ideas in these two dialogues is important
evidence that Gregory’s psychology was developed through a direct reading of
Plato.17 Cherniss maintains the originality of Gregory’s exegesis of Plato even
though he admits that the same sense of ὁρμή and μέρη appears in Philo.18
Cherniss also offers Albinus as an example of how a “student of Plato could”
(meaning would) “associate the two ideas, the tripartition of the soul and its
indivisibility.”19 Since Cherniss never acknowledges the possibility of alterna-
tive sources for Albinus he never deals with the possibility that Albinus’ asso-
tonism of Arius,” 17). Cherniss has no such hesitation: his work presumes the possibility of
distinguishing alternative influences; ostensibly the alternatives are Plato or Posidonius,
but in fact Cherniss imagines each philosophical school as clear and distinct entities.
13 This is Cherniss’ attitude towards all Platonic doctrines in Gregory, though Gregory’s psy-
chology seems to receive most of the comments to the effect that it is safest to assume
that Gregory acquired his notions from Plato directly.
14 Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa, 15 and 18.
15 Gerard Watson comments on the question of Gregory’s knowledge and use of Plato,
and on Cherniss’ opinion of the same, in his “Gregory of Nyssa’s Use of Philosophy,”
“[G]regory’s quotation of Plato even in non-philosophical passages, as Cherniss says [in his
book, p. 67], ‘establishes a basis for belief that he knew Plato accurately enough to quote
him or imitate him without recourse to the writing of Plato himself or to hand-books.’”
Warson, “Gregory of Nyssa’s Use of Philosophy,” 105. In the footnote to this passage Wat-
son adds (“Gregory of Nyssa’s Use of Philosophy,” 112): “Not everyone would agree with
Cherniss on this, but I myself am convinced of the rightness of his view.” Watson con-
tinues: “That [Gregory’s philosophical language] was predominantly Platonist is, I think,
hardly controvertible. That it was dependent more particularly on Porphyry is something
I am inclined to believe” (Watson, “Gregory of Nyssa’s Use of Philosophy,” 111–112). This is a
much more balanced judgment than Watson’s first reference to Cherniss. It is also a more
balanced judgment of Gregory’s Platonic sources than one can find anywhere in Cherniss,
who has nothing comparable to the suggestion that Gregory depended on Porphyry.
16 Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa, 20–21.
17 Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa, 21.
342 barnes
ciation of the indivisibility of the soul with its tripartition was either the result
of influences from other philosophical traditions (e.g., Aristotelian),20 or that
the “association” was one of many Platonic options available to a Platonist of
the third century C.E. One can refer to Galen, as I will do so in detail shortly, as
a Platonist who believed that the point of Plato’s doctrine of the soul’s triparti-
tion is precisely its divisibility.21
Cherniss confidently speaks of Platonism in the fourth century, Gregory’s
era, as though it were a clear and distinct single entity. No awareness is shown
of multiple Platonisms (or multiple Aristotelianisms, for that matter). Cherniss
does refer to Albinus,22 as I have just noted, and also to Plotinus.23 In both cases
20 For example, Alexander of Aprodisias shows particular sensitivity for the unity of the soul:
“Those distinctions which we do make with regard to soul, based as they are on the differ-
ences we discover among these powers, should not be conceived as an attempted to divide
the soul into parts that can be separated and joined together again.” On the Soul, 1.69:30,
Athanasios P. Fotinis, ed., The De Anima of Alexander of Aphrodiasias (Washington, DC:
Catholic University Press of America, 1979), 46.
21 Cherniss acknowledges that he has “not touched upon” Gregory’s medical sources. He left
this material aside because he felt a superficial survey would be worthless and a detailed
survey was outside the parameters of his work at hand. No one can fault a scholar for work-
ing within the institutional limits of academic work (again I am assuming that this was
his doctoral dissertation). But Cherniss also feels that knowing the sources of Gregory’s
medical knowledge “could not even feebly enlighten” his project. It is odd, however, that
an alternative Platonic understanding of tripartition, namely Galen’s, should be lost under
a rubric of “the useless matter of medical sources.” As I shall discuss below, one source for
criticism of both Cherniss’ account of Platonism in the fourth century CE and his inter-
pretation of Gregory’s psychology and anthropology is precisely through knowledge of
the medical tradition. (This is, in fact, a large part of Gerhardt Ladner’s argument against
Cherniss.) I will be treating Galen’s account of Plato’s psychology below. Cavarnos men-
tions Gregory’s medical language (with the implication that this use sets him apart from
Plato), but uses the fact of this language only for two limited purposes: first, to provide a
context for introducing Nemesius into the discussion; and second, to mention Gregory’s
use, in the Canonical Epistle, of a medical allegory in his discussion of the passions and
their “treatment.” Cavarnos, The Psychology of Gregory, 61–63 (= “The Relation of Body
and Soul,” 71–72).
22 Alternately, others might consider Albinus to be instead an example of the degree to which
the Platonism of the era absorbed Aristotelianism. Cherniss’ unequivocal use of Albinus
(fl. 149–157CE) as an example of Platonism pure and simple again reflects his work under
Roger Jones, who was actively engaged in a highly visible disagreement with scholars such
as R.E. Witt over the origins of Middle Platonic theology. See Reginald Eldred Witt, Albi-
nus and the History of Middle Platonism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937),
71–75 and 125, note 2. Witt’s is a clear example of the opinion that Albinus’ doctrines show
a marked Aristotelian character: see Albinus and the History of Middle Platonism, 115–126.
A more recent account of the relationship of Albinus’ philosophy to both Plato and Aris-
totle may be found in John Dillon, The Middle Platonists (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1977), 267–305, especially 276–280.
he refers to these philosophers to show the unity of Platonic philosophy in

Gregory’s era; indeed, he uses quotations from both philosophers to prove the
obvious, virtually intuitive, content of Platonic doctrine. Albinus says that the
tripartition of the soul indicates its indivisibility just as Cherniss says it does;
Plotinus thought that the soul is not in the body because the immaterial is not
contained by the material, just like Gregory. Cherniss assumes that both these
doctrines are unequivocally available in Plato.24
Cherniss continuously argues against any diminution of Plato’s influence
on Gregory, yet his description of Gregory’s relationship to Plato is more than
that of primary source for a philosophical language to be laid parallel to the
scriptural account of God and being.25 Cherniss repeatedly describes Gregory’s
relationship to Plato’s philosophy in terms of an attachment to, or internaliza-
tion of, Platonism. For example, Cherniss speaks of Gregory “unconsciously”
solving the Platonic problem of the tension between the soul’s unity and its
trichotomy.26 Gregory’s psychology is not only essentially Platonic, “more, his
use of it is Platonic.”27 In his conclusion Cherniss indulges in the sort of bio-
graphical speculation he will later chide scholars for:28 Gregory’s conflicted
relationships with Christianity and Platonism are dramatized in his own life
by the disagreement between his brother Basil and his uncle. Gregory tried to
resolve that conflict by forging letters of reconciliation between the two. This,
Cherniss suggests, is also how Gregory tried to solve the conflict he felt between
Christianity and Platonism.29 The proof-case is Gregory’s attitude to the doc-
trine of the resurrection. Cherniss says of Gregory:
He has so far accepted and insisted upon the pure immateriality of the
world of the resurrection that it is impossible for him to explain a physi-
24 The same assumption and attitude towards Gregory’s Platonism appears in Cavarnos.
There are no references to mediating sources, and little mention of any Christian influ-
ences on Gregory.
25 This, essentially, is Gerard Watson’s account of Gregory relationship to philosophy in
“Gregory of Nyssa’s Use of Philosophy,” 111. Watson argues for the importance of being
to Gregory as a religious theme, and I agree with him. Yet Watson’s argument is more
damaging—if one were to take the problematic of hellenization seriously—to Gregory
than Watson acknowledges. This fundamental concern for being is just what makes Gre-
gory a philosopher (pace Stead’s judgment in “Ontology and Terminology in Gregory of
Nyssa,” in Dörrie et al., eds., Gregor von Nyssa und die Philosophie, 107–125).
28 Cherniss, “The Biographical Fashion in Literary Criticism,” in Leonardo Taran, ed., Selected
Papers (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 1–13.
344 barnes
cal resurrection, while to accept the latter on faith means the damnation
of his previous argument. But he does accept the dogma and even tries to
account for it, although his account comes tottering to the gulf of com-
plete denial.30
Cherniss’ conclusion of the fundamentally Platonic character of Gregory’s

thought passed into the next generation of scholars, where its effect was to
lower the standards of criteria by which Gregory is shown to be a Platonist.
Werner Jaeger, for example, describes Gregory’s supposed idiosyncrasy of post-
poning full treatment of a problem to a later treatise as a “Platonic” trait.
This [preference for postponement] is the Platonic way, and Platonic was
the training of [Gregory’s] mind. How often had Plato later expanded a
problem briefly touched on in an earlier dialogue!31
Jaeger must mean no more than that Plato did not write philosophy in the
same systematic fashion as Aristotle since his comment makes sense only in
the context of a highly stylized comparison of Aristotle and Plato. One can add
that the Neoplatonist Plotinus (c. 204–270) did not write in the same fashion
as Aristotle, but the middle Platonist Galen (c. 129–210) wrote systematically,
and the Neoplatonist Proclus (c. 411–485) wrote very systematically indeed.32
Jaeger is certainly suggesting the association of Aristotle with dialectic in some
Christian literature since he follows the comment on Gregory’s and Plato’s pref-
erence for postponement with a reference to Gregory’s criticism of “the techno-
logical and formalistic character of Aristotle’s method.”33 Furthermore, what-
ever criticism of Aristotle one may find in Gregory, Jaeger’s comment finally
depends upon the early twentieth century scholarly tendency to use Plato and
Aristotle as contrasting paradigms of opposed philosophical world-views.
A second, more egregious, example of the scholarly tendency to offer trivial
“proofs” of Gregory’s “Platonism” is found in the work of Cavarnos, whose doc-
30 Ibid., 62.
31 Werner Jaeger, Two Rediscovered Works of Ancient Literature: Gregory of Nyssa and Macar-
ius (Leiden: Brill, 1954), 30.
32 Galen offers a four-part summary of the different philosophical methods he finds in use
in his time. He lists them in the order of their truth-value: first, true science, exemplified
by the works of Hippocrates, Plato (and Galen himself); second, dialectic, which Galen
associates primarily with Aristotle but also with Posidonius; third is rhetoric, which is vir-
tually useless; and finally, sophistry, which is all lies. See On the Doctrines of Hippocrates
and Plato, II.3.8–11, 1:111.
33 See Jaeger, Two Rediscovered Works of Ancient Literature, 31, note 1.
torate was directed by Werner Jaeger.34 Cavarnos consistently emphasizes Gre-

gory’s debt to Plato and yet the features of Gregory’s thought which Cavarnos
calls “Platonic” are all general in nature. Cavarnos finds Plato’s distinctive influ-
ence in most of Gregory’s thought, but especially in his psychology. For exam-
ple:35 (a) “The Platonic notion that in man there are two radically different
principles, the material and immaterial, the body and the soul, which interact,
left its permanent mark on Gregory”;36 (b) “Gregory, like Plato, considers the
soul indivisible, and again, like Plato, accepts the classical tripartite division of
the soul”;37 and (c) “For Gregory, as for Plato, the faculties of the soul have their
proper functions ….”38
A related example of Cavarnos’ problematic attitude towards the role of phi-
losophy in Gregory’s theology is his description of the role Gregory’s psychology
played in the development of Christian doctrine. Cavarnos believes that Gre-
gory turned to the subject of psychology because Gregory “felt the need” for
the Church “to develop a systematic psychology.”39 A systematic psychology
was necessary, he says, if Christianity was to explain “the mystery of life.” The
34 Cavarnos, The Psychology of Gregory of Nyssa. See footnote five for a literary history of
Cavarnos’ writings. For several decades Cavarnos’ scholarship enjoyed a status as the
“anglophone writing on Gregory’s psychology,” but his work has been overlooked in recent
scholarship. Of the following recent monographs on Gregory’s psychology or anthropol-
ogy, only Lucian Turcescu, Gregory of Nyssa and the Concept of Divine Persons (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005) cites both Cherniss and Cavarnos; Johannes Zachhuber,
Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa, SVC 46 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), Warren Smith, Passion and
Paradise: Human and Divine Emotion in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa (New York: Cross-
road Publishing, 2004), and Hans Boersma, Embodiment and Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) refer to Cherniss but not to Cavarnos.
35 The error of identifying the Platonic doctrine of the soul with these traits exclusively can
be indicated by recourse to (among other works) John Dillon’s The Middle Platonists: on
pp. 144ff. Dillon treats Philo’s basic doctrine of soul; on pp. 194ff. he does the same for
Plutarch; and on pp. 290ff., he treats Albinus’ doctrine of soul. Dillon makes clear that
while all these psychologies are “Platonic,” none of them are exactly the same. A secondary
source that would have been available to Cherniss and to Cavarnos in which could have
brought some caution to Cavarnos’ list of “Platonic” traits is J.L. Stock’s “Plato and the Tri-
partite Soul,” Mind 24 (1915): 207–221. Stock presents a consistent account of alternative
(i.e., Pythagorean) sources for most of the doctrines Cavarnos equates with Platonism.
36 Cavarnos, The Psychology of Gregory of Nyssa, 63.
37 Cavarnos, The Psychology of Gregory of Nyssa, 64 (= “The Relation of Body and Soul,” 73).
Cavarnos is not clear whether Plato accepts a tripartite division of the soul, or whether he
invented it.
38 Cavarnos, The Psychology of Gregory of Nyssa, 63, where, in note 213, Cavarnos cites the
entire Republic dialogue as a proof for this doctrine in Plato (= “The Relation of Body and
Soul,” 73, note 63).
346 barnes
proper treatment of psychology had been “delayed so long” because it was a

difficult subject that involved extensive knowledge in many fields (Cavarnos
mentions theology, philosophy and medicine) as well as “practical experience
and keen observation.”40 Apparently no Christian had these qualities before
Gregory; Tertullian’s On the Soul does not even warrant an honorable mention
(much less the writings of Clement of Alexandria).
3 Gregory’s Doctrine of a Unified Soul and the Allegorical Reading of

the Phaedrus
Cherniss’ description of Plato’s psychology emphasizes the unity of the soul:

he criticizes Gronau for an insufficient appreciation of the reality of the unity
Plato attributes to the soul, namely, that it is “an indissoluble unit.”41 Cherniss
buttresses Plato’s description at Republic (611 B) by turning to the Phaedo (78
B ff.): there “Plato definitely shows that he bases his belief of the immortality
of the soul upon the fact that it is uncompounded. Moreover, even when Plato
speaks of the soul as divided into parts, that is when he speaks of an appetitive
and a passionate soul, he does not forget to insist that only the reasonable part
is immortal and divine.”42
Cherniss frequently refers to Gregory’s use of the chariot image of the soul
from the Phaedrus in his positive argument for Gregory’s appropriation of
Plato’s doctrine of the unitary soul. These references require some comment
since Gregory’s use of this image has become a much-used shorthand proof
for the Platonic nature of Gregory’s psychology, and the confidence to make
such claims seems to derive from Cherniss’ comments to this effect. Cherniss
remarks that Gregory uses the Phaedrus myth often, sometimes altering it
to suit a passage of Scripture he is explaining.43 From this frequent use and

42 Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa, 13. A similar emphasis on the unity of soul in
Gregory’s Platonic psychology occurs in Cavarnos, The Psychology of Gregory, 23. Cavarnos’
argument in “The Relation of Body and Soul,” is somewhat different than the one he
emphasized in the dissertation: in the later article Cavarnos focuses, p. 65, on Gregory’s
doctrine of the co-creation of body and soul as an indicator of the partlessness of the
soul.
43 Cavarnos is more nuanced about Gregory’s use of this “simile;” he says, for example, “The
use Gregory makes of this simile at times is by no means Platonic, but is altered in such
a way as to explain some principle he wishes to illustrate vividly, even if that means the
distortion of the original figure.” Cavarnos, The Psychology of Gregory, 60 (= “The Relation
free alteration, in particular from one instance of the image in Life of Moses,
Cherniss again argues that Gregory had read Plato’s dialogue without benefit of
“the interpretations of Stoics or Academics.”44 It may indeed be the case that
Gregory had read the Phaedrus in its entirety, but Gregory’s penchant for the
myth of the Chariot does not prove it.45 Furthermore, Gregory’s (or Macrina’s)
enthusiasm for the myth is not as univocal as Cherniss would have it: in On
the Soul and Resurrection Macrina specifically rejects the Chariot myth as the
proper solution to the problem of the passions.46 Cherniss is silent about this
passage.
It gradually becomes clear in The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa that the core
of Cherniss’ argument for Gregory’s direct appropriation of Plato’s psychology
of the unitary soul is Gregory’s use of the Phaedrus myth. In Cherniss’ account
the myth is Plato’s central means of explaining the unity of the soul in the face
of the experience of its parts. Plato does this in the myth not so much through
the characterizations of the charioteer and the two horses but by the fact that
the soul’s partition is described allegorically, and no more than this.47 Allegory,
in this case, means that Plato does not actually recognize the real existence of
these parts in the soul, and that he does not mean to attribute real existence
to these parts.48 Gregory’s understanding that the myth is “allegorical” is con-
of Body and Soul,” 71.) On the other hand, Cavarnos, like Cherniss, considers the Chariot
story to be Plato’s premier account of the tripartite soul, and he prefers it to accounts in
the Republic or Timaeus.
44 Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa, 15. Cherniss makes this point again on p. 18.
45 Daniélou remarks on Gregory’s use of the Chariot myth, but he sees Gregory’s use of it
to be heavily adapted through the injection of scriptural images. Furthermore, Daniélou
thinks that Gregory is following Philo on the use and allegoricalization of this particular
myth. See Platonisme et théologie mystique, 70. Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa,
15, recognizes the Philonic material only as “the queer perversion of the myth.”
46 M 49C, English is in volume V:439, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Second Series (here-
after cited as NPNF 2).
47 Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa, 13 and 16.
48 Daniélou also speaks of Gregory’s allegorical interpretation of the myth: indeed, he
emphasizes Gregory’s habit of allegorizing everything, for this is Gregory’s specific Chris-
tian genius for him: “On peut dire, en somme, que Grégoire a tout allégorisé, meme la
philosophie.” Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique, 9. Cherniss thinks that this alle-
gorizing is quintessentially Platonic of Gregory. Cherniss’ emphasis on allegory as the
definitive Platonic reading of Plato, coupled with Daniélou’s obvious enthusiasm for alle-
gory as a method, leads one to wonder whether Cherniss and Daniélou were reacting
against either an alternative description of Platonism among their contemporaries (i.e.,
a literalist reading of Plato), or against ancient interpretations of Plato that were non-
allegorical and literalist (e.g., Galen). One is also struck by the total lack of consideration
of Origen as a more likely source for any enthusiasm on Gregory’s part for allegorical read-
348 barnes
nected, by this account, to his acquaintance and appreciation of those passages

where Plato says, apparently without allegory, “that the soul is an indissoluble
unit.”49 This dual emphasis on allegory as preferred method and the Phaedrus
as preferred source (for Plato’s psychology) seems designed to support the con-
tention that Plato taught, unequivocally, a unified soul. The rather literal organ
(if not parts) language of the Timaeus, which might support the idea that Plato
taught real divisions in the soul (as Galen thought he did, based on this text),
is avoided in favor of an account which is already allegorized—the myth of the
Chariot.50
Cherniss’ argument from the Phaedrus then has two parts: first, that it is
Platonic (i.e., Plato’s own unique doctrine) to feel the tension between the
unity of the soul and the trichotomus divisions of the soul; and second, Plato
resolved this tension by considering the reality of the divisions to be secondary
to the reality of the unity. Cherniss’ peculiar judgment that only Plato (and
readers of Plato) felt the tension between the soul’s unity and its trichoto-
mus divisions51 turns into another proof for Gregory’s Platonic psychology
in Cavarnos’ account: “Gregory, like Plato, considers the soul indivisible, and
again, like Plato, accepts the classical tripartite division of the soul.”52 Cherniss
ing. Indeed, in the realm of psychology, Gregory’s interpretations are, when compared to
Origen’s, considerably more literal (e.g., the role of “animals” as a psychological category).
50 We may compare Cherniss’ description of what was Platonic in Gregory’s time with
Galen’s use of the Chariot myth. Galen faithfully and regularly uses the image of the char-
ioteer from the Phaedrus to illustrate the relationship of the three parts in the soul. How-
ever, he says that it is not the best image of the soul that Plato offered: Galen prefers Plato’s
likening the appetites to a many-headed beast, the temper to a lion, and the rational to a
man from Republic IX 590A9 and 588C7. See On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato VI 2,
4. II:369. Daniélou, Platonisme et théologie mystique, 80, does not distinguish the psychol-
ogy of the Phaedrus from that of the Republic, and he refers to the preference of Synesius
for this image of the multi-headed beast, relating it to Romans 8:23, on the interior man
versus the law of the body’s members. Galen prefers these similes because they convey
the radical difference, indeed the essential difference in kind, between each of the three
forms, which the Charioteer and two horses images misses. Galen either missed or pur-
posefully lost the second hierarchy—one driver, two horses—contained in the Phaedrus’
images. A similar neglect of the rational-irrational dichotomy represented in the Phae-
drus story, coupled with a preference for the Republic IX similes, can be found in Plotinus,
Ennead I, 1, 7.
51 A similar sensitivity to tension between the soul’s unity and its trichotomus divisions can
be found in Alexander of Aphrodisias (i.e., an “Aristotelian”).
52 “The Relation of Body and Soul,” 64. Cavarnos’ statements in the article on the Platonic
nature of the doctrine of the soul’s unity are actually more emphatic than those he makes
in the dissertation: “Gregory, like Plato, desirous of stressing the immortality of the soul by
pointing out its simple and uncompounded nature, insists strongly on the indivisibility of
and Cavarnos consider this interpretation of Plato’s psychology self-evident.

Galen’s account of Plato’s psychology provides a glaring example of a vigorous
counter-interpretation of Plato, which by its very existence defeats Cherniss’
assumption of the obvious content of Plato’s doctrine on the unity of the soul.
However, neither Cherniss nor Cavarnos looked to Galen as a witness to the
psychology of the era.53
4 Gregory and Argument from the Role of Δύναμις in Classical

Psychologies
One of the important subjects in the controversy over the Platonic or Posido-
nian character of Gregory’s psychology has been over the significance of the
use of δύναμις in his psychology.54 Δύναμις was used by Plato as a term for differ-
ent cognitive faculties—i.e., the faculties which correspond to different kinds
of knowing.55 The term took on broader senses of a variety of psychological
faculties in Aristotle, and from Aristotle these volitional-type senses of δύναμις
enter (re-enter?) Platonism. Both Cherniss and Cavarnos have the same firm
judgment on how δύναμις figures in Platonic psychology and thus how, if at all,
Gregory’s use of the term would be indicative of his relationship to Platonic psy-
chology as a whole. In short, if the psychologies of Plato, Aristotle, Posidonius
and the Stoics can each be distinguished by the different senses they give to
the soul.” (p. 23). The assumption here is the same as the assumption in Cherniss: that it
is exclusively Platonic to feel the tension between the unity of the soul and the trichoto-
mous divisions of the soul. However, Cavarnos acknowledges Gregory’s “inconsistency”
on the matter of the soul’s divisions more clearly than Cherniss does. See Cavarnos, The
Psychology of Gregory, 26–27, 59, 65–66.
53 By contrast, see the attention to Galen in Gerhart Ladner “The Philosophical Anthropol-
ogy of Saint Gregory of Nyssa,” DOP 12 (1958), 61–94 at 69, 71, and 78.
54 One example of Gregory’s use of δύναμις in his psychology may be found in On the Making
of Humanity VI: “… not even in our own case are the faculties [δυνάμεις] which appre-
hend things numerous, although we are in touch with those things which affect our life in
many ways by means of our senses; for there is one faculty [δύναμις], the implanted mind
itself, which passes through each of the organs of sense and grasps the things beyond:
this it is that, by means of the eyes, beholds what is seen; this it is that, by means of hear-
ing, understands what is said; that is content with what is to our taste, and turns from
what is unpleasant; that uses the hand for whatever it wills, taking hold or rejecting by
its means, using the help of the organ for this purpose precisely as it thinks expedient.”
NPNF 2 V:391.
55 For an account of δύναμις in early Greek philosophy, see my The Power of God: Δύναμις in
Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America
Press, 2001).
350 barnes
δύναμις then whatever use Gregory makes of the term indicates his philosophi-
cal orientation. Or so the argument runs in both Cherniss and Cavarnos. How-
ever, the methodological question that presents itself is whether the psycholo-
gies of each school do differ in clear and distinct ways of using δύναμις. What
is at stake in such a question is determining whether Gregory’s understand-
ing of the soul accords with a Platonic “dualism” or a Christian “unity.” (This is
the antinomy that Cherniss works with, and however much scholarship may
have developed since his time, the notion of a “Platonic dualism” over against
a “Christian unity” in human psychology has endured among many scholars).
Galen understood Plato to have taught that the human soul had three parts
[μέρη] or forms [εἴδη], which were each located in specific organs of the body.
According to Galen, this is the psychology that Plato taught in Books IV and
IX of the Republic, in the Timaeus, and in his other books, such as the Phae-
drus. Galen suggests that Plato learned this psychology from the works of
Hippocrates. Galen does not recognize this three-part psychology as Platonic
except in the narrow sense that Plato taught it; the doctrines did not originate
with Plato, and he was not the only person to teach them.56 Plato’s great virtue,
in Galen’s eyes, was to offer a scientific proof for this tripartite psychology in
Book IV of the Republic, which Galen cites frequently and in some detail.57
Galen’s primary description of the soul is that it has three forms, but because
each of these forms resides in a part of the body, that is, an organ, the descrip-
tion “three parts” is correct as well.
As Plato holds both that these forms are separated by their location in
the body and that they differ very greatly in essence, he has good reason
to call them both forms and parts.58
56 We have no extant Hippocratic texts that contain this psychology of three parts or forms,
but Galen never wavers from his belief that the psychology outlined above was taught
by Hippocrates before Plato taught it. There have been scholarly arguments in the last
hundred years for the Pythagorean origins of Plato’s tripartite psychology: see, for exam-
ple, Stock, “Plato and the Tripartite Soul,” 210–215, where the argument is made that Plato
depends upon a Pythagorean fable of the three lives. The original content of this fable
seems to have been similar to modern fables like The Three Little Pigs, or The Grasshop-
per and the Ant. The political discovery in the Republic of the three fundamental psychic
parts or functions shows its origins in the Pythagorean fable, except that in Plato’s exe-
gesis the three life-choices are interiorized as permanent dramas in the soul. However,
contemporary scholarship has abandoned the Pythagorean fable premise.
57 This use of Republic IV as the source of Plato’s psychology is traditional in the era. At one
point Clement of Alexandria seems to be referring to this book as the Περὶ Ψυχῆς of Plato:
see Stromates I:XV.
58 On the Doctrines, VI 2, 5. 1:369. Galen contrasts Plato’s doctrines with Aristotle’s and Posi-
According to Galen’s report, Aristotle and Posidonius believe that at the

level of οὐσία the soul is one, and that multiplicity begins only at the level of
δύναμις (namely, there is one οὐσία with three δυνάμεις), a psychology which
Galen regards as nothing like Plato’s.59 Though the attribution of the heart as
the source for these powers is at least a physiological error, as we might call
it, the fact that Aristotle and Posidonius attribute the cause of these powers
to a single organ serves as an indication of the excessive unity Aristotle and
Posidonius attribute to the human soul since for Galen each part is associ-
ated with a separate organ. In Galen’s account, at the level of οὐσία the soul is
three, since each of the three forms of the soul possesses a different essence.60
Again, Galen’s doctrine that each of these three forms has its origin in a sepa-
rate organ is a physiological expression of the fundamental multiplicity of the
human soul.61
Cherniss agrees that it was “Platonic fashion” to speak of parts of the soul,
but he limits any such Platonic doctrine to “where the soul is being considered
as embodied.”62 This language of parts never intrudes upon the essential unity
of the soul, however, although in all of Cherniss’ treatment of Plato’s psychol-
ogy he never produces a quotation with the phrase μία οὐσία or μία φύσις (nor
donius’, on the one hand, and Chrysippus’, on the other. Of the first two he says: “[They]
did not speak of forms or parts of the soul, but say that there are powers [δυνάμεις] of a sin-
gle substance [οὐσία] which stems from the heart.” Ibid., VI 2, 5. 2:369. Plato taught that:
“[O]ur soul is not simple or uniform in substance [οὐσία] but composed of three parts,
each with its own form and each having not one but several powers [δυνάμεις].” Ibid., IX 9,
22. 2:603.
59 If Cherniss were to have judged Aristotle and Posidonius by the description Galen gives
of them, then Cherniss would have had to conclude that they teach a psychology that he
normally describes as Platonic.
60 This point comes out clearly in Galen’s description of the liver, which he believes is the
site of the ἐπιθυματικόν. Galen says: “For the present, let it be called a power, although we
shall later demonstrate with more precision that the liver is the source of many powers,
and it would be better to speak of a substance [οὐσία] of the soul, rather than a power,
enclosed in each of the three internal organs.” On the Doctrines, VI 3, 7. 2: 375.
61 I do not mean to deny that Galen had a legitimate neurological argument with Aristotle,
and to a lesser extent with Posidonius, namely, their erroneous belief that the heart was
the center of the nervous system and the seat of the rational function. (A good example of
the Aristotelian doctrine of the heart as seat of the intellect may be found in Alexander’s
On the Soul, 2.11, Fotinis, The De Anima of Alexander of Aphrodiasias, 53). I mean to suggest,
rather, that for Galen this argument reflected issues other than simply the neurological
errors of Aristotle and Posidonius. I must note, however, that while it is certainly true that
Gregory is emphatic that the nervous system is the seat of the mind, when he speaks of
those who believe that the heart is the seat he mentions only the Stoics Posidonius and
Chrysippus, and not, as one would expect, Aristotle.
352 barnes
does he evidently feel the need to do so). Cherniss’ real argument with Posido-
nius, as he understands him, is not that Posidonius’ teachings infringed upon
the soul’s unity (though they did do that) but that the unity is accomplished
by leveling the soul’s different natures into one kind of part: a power or faculty
(δύναμις). If all the parts of the soul are powers, including the mind, then all the
parts of the soul are equally susceptible to change as passion.63 Both Cherniss
and Cavarnos are emphatic that Gregory never conceived of the soul as truly
divided: in particular they deny that Gregory considered the two lower types
of soul to be divisions in the intellectual soul, though what they gain by this
denial is not clear, except to say that the intellectual soul suffers no change in
its essential nature.64 Cavarnos says that “Gregory does not consider the two
lower faculties parts of the soul.”65 Since Cavarnos never considers the concep-
tual relationship between “faculties” and “parts” he never encounters the fact
that, by definition, faculties are not parts.66
The origin of the modern American scholarly engagement with the ques-
tion of the philosophical character of Gregory’s psychology begins with the
argument Cherniss’ director, Roger Jones, had with Gronau over the content
of “Stoic psychology.” The debate continues. Cherniss and Cavarnos reflected
63 Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa, 16. I italicize the word part(s) here to indicate
that the use is artificial: Posidonius would not speak of “parts of the soul,” his psychology
is intended to deny the attribution of parts to the soul.
64 Cavarnos, The Psychology of Gregory, 24 (= “The Relation of Body and Soul,” 64).
65 Cavarnos, The Psychology of Gregory, 59 (= “The Relation of Body and Soul,” 71).
66 Furthermore, Gregory’s divorcing of the three psychological distinctions in the soul from
the three physical divisions of the body, as he does in On the Nature of Man M 44:241C–
245D, NPNF 2 V:423–424, is another feature of his thought which is “unplatonic,” both in
the sense of the Platonism of the dialogues and of school Platonism. Gregory treats these
two causal models, the psychological and the physiological, as wholly separate, never once
linking the divisions in the soul with the divisions in the body. After he offers a description
of the soul as consisting of three faculties, the nutritive, the perceptive, and the rational
at On the Making of Man, M 44 144D–176D, NPNF 2 V:393–403, he then offers a parallel
description of living organisms (not souls) as also consisting of three faculties, the moist,
the hot, and the mixing principle. These three faculties are each associated with an organ
or physiological place: the moist is associated with the liver (and blood); the hot is asso-
ciated with the heart (and respiration); and the mixing principle is associated with the
nervous system. Though this latter trichotomy of powers is explicitly associated with spe-
cific organs Gregory is emphatic that the three powers of the soul, and in particular the
highest faculty mind, are not to be associated with any one organ. Indeed, Gregory’s sep-
aration of the distinctions in the soul from the divisions in the body distinguishes his
psychology from Plato’s; in particular this separation means that any use by Gregory of
a parts vocabulary must not be taken as obvious proof that Gregory held a “Platonic” psy-
chology.
upon the “identity” of Gregory’s psychology within the scholarly context of a

debate over the role of δύναμις in Stoic psychology, in particular on the ques-
tion of whether δύναμις was used in Stoic accounts of the soul, and, if yes, when
did this use begin.67 Neoplatonists like Iamblichus (c. 242–327) and Simplicius
(6th century) did indeed attribute the psychological use of δύναμις to the Stoics,
but the new question in recent scholarship is how accurate are these after-the-
fact reports of δύναμις as a Stoic psychological term? For example, did the Stoics
themselves refer to the ἡγεμονικόν as a δύναμις? Did Stoics use the term δύναμις
to name and number capacities in the mind? Gronau, Cherniss, and Cavarnos
(and many other scholars of the time) accepted the later Neoplatonic reports
of Stoic psychology at face value, and answered “yes” to questions such as both
of these. These scholars not only regarded the use of δύναμις to mean a mental
faculty as being Stoic, they attributed the origin of such a use to the influence
of one Stoic exclusively: Posidonius. Gronau, for example, took Gregory’s psy-
chological use of δύναμις as one proof of Posidonius’ influence on Gregory. In
his response, Cherniss did not dispute the connection between the psycholog-
ical use of δύναμις and Posidonius; instead, Cherniss’ refutation of Posidonian
influence was to deny that Gregory used δύναμις as a significant term in his psy-
chology.68 What all these scholars agreed upon, however, was that where one
sees the description of mental faculties as δυνάμεις one has found the influence
of Posidonius.69 However, this judgment is no longer tenable.
67 Posidonius clearly uses δύναμις in such a fashion, but the question is how representative
of Stoicism was Posidonius’ psychology? More generally put, the question is what is the
relationship between Posidonius’ philosophy and Stoicism as a whole? This latter ques-
tion provides a running subtext in the recent Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy
[Keimpe Algra et al., eds., Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1999)], where the question is engaged from a variety of viewpoints.
See, for example, pp. 449, 490, 571, 772, 777, and the whole of the “Epilogue,” by Michael
Frede.
68 Cherniss acknowledges that Gregory uses δύναμις, but only in the limited senses Plato gives
the term in some dialogues. See notes #6, p. 67, #12, p. 68, and #15, p. 68. The Platonic use
of δύναμις in psychology fails to register on Cherniss as significant, or as indicating a bona
fide alternate source for a δύναμις-based psychology.
69 Cavarnos never treats “power,” “faculty,” or δύναμις as a subject. He makes statements like:
“[Nyssa’s Platonic] division of the soul into three faculties very often differs from the
strictly Platonic division in so far as the designation of the faculties is concerned. The
words movement (κίνησις) and impulse (ὁρμή) are used instead of part (μέρος) and fac-
ulty or power (δύναμις).” Cavarnos, The Psychology of Gregory of Nyssa, 70. Furthermore,
the history of the distinctions between these words is never described, but more impor-
tantly, if Gregory does not use δύναμις (as Cavarnos says) then how can Cavarnos speak
of Gregory’s “division of the soul into three faculties” (p. 70.) or “These three faculties …
354 barnes
Galen, who is always alert for differences between Plato’s and other psy-
chologies, does not consider δύναμις to be a peculiarly Posidonian term. Galen
distinguishes the relationships of the different schools to δύναμις not according
to whether they use δύναμις at all, but according to whether they give a prior-
ity to the concept of μέρος/μέρη—part(s). In Galen’s schematic both Aristotle
and Posidonius use δύναμις, and not μέρη, to describe the divisions in the soul,
and in that they err by not taking seriously enough the reality of these psychic
divisions. Galen himself speaks of each part of the soul possessing a power,
and in his On the Natural Faculties Galen describes his schematic for classify-
ing all the organization of all living creatures; this classification runs from the
δύναμις to the ἐνέργεια to the ἔργον.70 As the title suggests, the primary category
in this classification is δύναμις, i.e., the faculties. Cherniss’ belief that δύναμις
could only belong to a Posidonian psychology blinded him to Gregory’s use of
the term. Gregory could have believed that Plato taught the unity of the soul
in an unequivocal fashion, as Cherniss believes Plato did, but there were other
options open to Gregory.
as Gregory states …” (64). Cavarnos again quotes Gregory: “The power of the soul appears
in accordance with the condition of the body” (69). The examples could be multiplied
almost indefinitely: “Let us now turn to the faculties of the soul …” (70); or “For Gregory,
as for Plato, the faculties of the soul have their proper functions ….” (73); or “When Gre-
gory enters the field of medicine … he sets forth three faculties or powers [governing the
body]” (73). A related problem occurs when Cavarnos says “Gregory claims that just as
the universe is held together by one power, so the human body is held together by the
human soul” (67, speaking of On the Soul and Resurrection M 46 28 A). Clearly Gregory
does use δύναμις, and Cavarnos must know this since he repeatedly offers citations which
include the word (see, e.g., footnotes #38, #39, #66, etc.). Cavarnos made the decision not
to give the reader an understanding of the concept(s) of power or faculty. The problem
is not so much a matter of the limitations of this decision (since all authors must make
decisions about what to say now and what not to say now), but it is a question of the gen-
uineness of Cavarnos’ decision when he makes statements such as Gregory does not use
δύναμις while at the same time regularly attributing the concept named by δύναμις, i.e.,
faculty, to Gregory, and providing citations that show that Gregory did indeed use δύνα-
μις. Why should Cavarnos obscure Gregory’s use of δύναμις as faculty? Because he thought
that such a use was Posidonian in origin, and would thus show—as Gronau had argued—
Posidonius’ influence on Gregory.
70 For my treatment of the role of this language in the Eunomian controversy, see Michel
R. Barnes, “Background and Use of Eunomius’ Causal Hierarchy,” in Michel R. Barnes and
Daniel H. Williams, eds., Arianism After Arius: Essays on the Development of the Fourth Cen-
tury Trinitarian Conflicts (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 217–236.
5 Conclusion
The judgment that Gregory’s psychology was “Platonic” has passed into schol-
arship as a commonplace. For much of this scholarship the origins of this judg-
ment are to be found in the writings of a generation of scholars, most notably
Cherniss, Jaeger and Cavarnos. My purpose in this article has been to show the
origins of that commonplace in one important trajectory of scholarship on Gre-
gory, the limitations in those previous accounts of Gregory’s psychology, and
to suggest ways in which the past scholarship has hardened into the received
horizon for reading Gregory.
My description has placed greater emphasis on the exact context of Gre-
gory’s lifetime, in particular, the content of psychologies in Gregory’s time, the
psychologies Gregory received and read. In my judgment, such psychologies
were—seemingly strangely perhaps—both eclectic and polemical, and must
be read as such. Descriptions of the origins of Gregory’s psychology based solely
on direct comparisons with the writings of Plato or Aristotle are in principle
useless, since this method inevitably but unconsciously compares Gregory’s
psychology with an early twentieth century description of the psychologies
of both these philosophers, and ignores the mediated character of these doc-
trines in both fourth-century philosophy and twentieth-century scholarship.
Furthermore, none of the scholars examined explain why one should imagine
that Gregory had one single psychological language, Platonic or Aristotelian,71
which he applied with rigorous constancy regardless of the specific purpose
(or audience) of a text: both Philo and Plotinus, for example, use different psy-
chologies according to the problem at hand.72 There is no reason to assume that
Gregory used only one kind of psychology throughout all his writings.73 None
71 For example, in his “Philosophical Anthropology,” 72, Ladner is uncomfortable with

acknowledging Gregory’s Aristotelian psychology, and minimizes the importance of the
Aristotelian material by suggesting that Gregory did not “integrate” his Aristotelian termi-
nology with his Platonic.
72 For a description of Philo’s different “psychologies,” see P.A. Vander Waerdt, “The Peri-
patetic Interpretation of Plato’s Tripartite Psychology,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Stud-
ies 26 (1985): 283–302. For similar observations about Plotinus, see Henry J. Blumenthal,
Plotinus’ Psychology: His Doctrines of the Embodied Soul (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1971), 21.
73 David N. Bell’s judgment on the character of Gregory’s psychology is a good example of
a more nuanced approach: “Gregory’s main psychological analysis, like that of Nemesius
of Emesa … is Aristotelian … although in other works of Gregory [than On the Making of
Man] the Platonic scheme is of greater significance ….” David Bell, “The Tripartite Soul and
the Image of God in the Latin Tradition,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médievale 47
(1980): 16–52, at 29.
356 barnes
of these authors explain why their choice of texts exemplifies the fundamen-
tal character and content of Gregory’s psychology. In particular, the Platonic
character that scholars such as Cherniss and Cavarnos found to be Gregory’s
was based upon readings that accorded an improper priority to some of Gre-
gory’s writings over the evidence of other texts, a priority owing in large part to
presumptions about genre.
The lack of consideration by Cherniss and Cavarnos of possible Christian
sources, which takes the generalized form of a neglect of the Christian context
of Gregory’s writing, results in an account of Gregory’s doctrine of passion in
which this doctrine has little relationship to his theology. For example, Cherniss
argues that the reason why Gregory is emphatic about the unchangeableness
of the soul is because unchangeableness is “the important requisite”74 for the
argument of the divinity of the soul. But this judgment still leaves us with the
question of why Gregory was concerned to show that unchangeability is the
image of God in the soul when he otherwise argues against a static notion of
spirituality.75 The answer to that question is to be found only if one considers
the theological context of Gregory’s psychology: for Gregory divine unchange-
ability means non-susceptibility to passions or external causes, and this divine
property is important in the face of criticism of Nicene “Father” language (since
“Father” suggests passion). In short, separating Gregory’s psychology (and his
philosophy generally) from its theological context not only misrepresents that
psychology, it occludes the fact of the plasticity of philosophy in the hands of
a deeply speculative theologian.76
The question of Gregory’s “Platonism” and implications for contemporary
appropriations of his mystical theology—especially his theological anthropol-
ogy—are as decisive as they were in the first half of the twentieth century. The
energy sustaining such questions has increased since the opening rounds, and
the topic has broadened significantly since the days of Gronau, Cherniss and
Cavarnos—e.g., scholarship has moved beyond “Platonism” and “Posidonian-
ism” as the dominant philosophical alternatives faced by Gregory. What has
remained as a consistent concern is the question Cherniss put on the table
in its modern form: what does Gregory’s Platonism—however you map it—
mean for Gregory’s Christianity? That question matters more now than it did
74 Cherniss, The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa, 16. Cherniss correctly points out that for Gre-
gory passion presents the psychological reality of external cause.
75 Gregory introduces his doctrine of a perpetual progress and non-satiation in On the Soul
and Resurrection and On the Making of Man.
76 See my “Divine Unity and the Divided Self: Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology in its
Psychological Context,” Modern Theology 18 (2002): 475–496.
for Cherniss or Cavarnos because Gregory’s theology has taken on broad and
profound significance for many contemporary theologians that have found in
Gregory a post-modern fluency with language and symbols of relationship,
community, and erotic love.77
77 For a useful overview of these contemporary engagements, see Morwenna Ludlow, Gre-
gory of Nyssa, Ancient and (Post)Modern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). See also
the aforementioned Hans Boersma, Embodiment and Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa.
chapter 18
Charioteer and Helmsman: Some Distant Echoes of

Plato’s Phaedrus in Syriac Literature
Sebastian Brock
In the Phaedrus Plato provided two different images of the interrelationship of

the three parts of the soul and how they need to function together. According to
the first image, the nous is described as being like a charioteer (ἡνίοχος) holding
the reins of two horses harnessed together, the horses representing the spirited
(θυμικόν) and appetitive (ἐπιθυμητικόν) elements in the soul.1 According to the
second image, the νοῦς acts like the helmsman, or pilot (κυβερνήτης) of a ship.2
Plato returned to the imagery elsewhere, in particular in the Timaeus where the
three elements of the soul are distributed to different parts of the body, the νοῦς
to the head, the θυμικόν to the breast, and the ἐπιθυμητικόν to the abdomen.3
These two images were picked up and adapted in different ways by many
subsequent authors. These writers were not so much the professional philoso-
phers, who had different concerns when discussing the soul,4 but rather they
were people with a practical religious interest in how the soul functioned, such
as Philo who employed one or other, or both images together, on a number of
occasions. Thus in the following passage of the Legum Allegoriae, having pro-
vided an etymology (reasonably correct) for the fourth river flowing from Par-
adise, the Euphrates, he points out that “fruitfulness” symbolically represents
the fourth virtue, justice, since it is fruitful in bringing gladness to the mind. He
then asks, “When does this happen?,” and immediately he gives the answer:
1 Plato, Phaedrus, 246a, 253d–254c.

2 Plato Phaedrus 247c; cf. Politicus 272e, Republic 488cd.
3 Plato, Timaeus 69c–e. This is picked up and developed by Shemʿon d-Taybuteh in the seventh
century: see Alphonse Mingana, Early Christian Mystics, WS 7 (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons
Limited, 1934), 63–66.
4 See, for example, Richard Sorabji, The Philosophy of the Commentators 200–600AD. A Source-
book. Vol. 1. Psychology (with Ethics and Religion) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 182–
274, and Carlos Steel, The Changing Self. A Study on the Soul in Later Neoplatonism: Iamblichus,
Damascius and Priscianus (Brussels: Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en
Schone Kunsten van België, 1978); and for Syriac, Henri Hugonnard-Roche, “La question de
l’âme dans la tradition philosophique syriaque (VIe–IXe s.),” Studia Graeco-Arabica 4 (2014):
17–64.

charioteer and helmsman 359
When the three parts of the soul act in harmony. Harmony (συμφωνία) for
them consists in the rule (ἡγεμονία) of the better—as is the case when the
pair, high-spirited (τὸ θυμικόν) and desiring (τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν) are guided
like horses by reasoning (το λογικόν) as the charioteer (ὴνιοχῶνται … ὑπὸ
τοῦ λογικοῦ). It is then that justice occurs. For it is just that the better
should always and everywhere rule, and the worse to be ruled. The bet-
ter is reasoning, and the worse desire and high spirit. Conversely, when
temper (θυμός) and desire (ἐπιθυμία) become restive and get out of con-
trol, by force of their impetus they will drag down the charioteer—that
is, reason (λογισμόν), placing it under the yoke while each passion grabs
hold of the rein—and injustice takes hold.5
In another work his words remain applicable in the context of modern discus-
sion of the relationship between human beings and the environment. Com-
menting on the fact that in the account of Creation in Genesis humanity is
created last, Philo observes that last is not least,
witness charioteers and steersmen: the former come after their harnessed
animals and are positioned behind them, holding the reins and driving
them where they wish, at one point letting them fall into a sharp trot,
at another, holding them back if they are going too fast. Again, though
helmsmen go to the stern, at the rear of the boat, one might say that they
are more important than everyone else on board, in that they have in their
hands the safety of both the ship and those on board.6
Philo, of course, never got translated into Syriac (as he did into Armenian), but
his use of Plato’s imagery nicely provides an appropriate background to the very
similar ways in which certain Syriac authors employed the imagery.
It so happened that both ἡνίοχος and κυβερνήτης had entered Syriac as Greek
loanwords already by the mid-fourth century, when both are attested in Aphra-
hat’s Demonstration XIV,7 and the latter probably earlier in the Peshitta trans-
5 Philo, Leg. I, 72–73.

6 Philo, Opif. 88.
7 Dem. XIV.3, in a lament series: “People have slept while the Evil One has sown his tares. The
waves are lifted up and the storms have become fierce. Charioteers (henyoke) have fallen and
the chariots are upset. Sailors have dozed off, and their ships have sunk.” And Dem. XIV. 16, “A
helmsman (guberniṭa) who keeps vigil will preserve his yardarm (esqarya < ἱσ⟨το⟩κεραία), so
that his ship does not sink and he lose his merchandise. The wise charioteer will secure his
chariot, lest he fall and be mocked.” The spelling guberniṭa here, with initial g, not q, reflecting
the Greek spelling in some papyri, seems not to be found elsewhere in Syriac; for it, see Aaron
360 brock
lation of Acts 27:11 and in the Odes of Solomon (16:1).8 Both loanwords, but
especially quberniṭa, turn up quite frequently in subsequent Syriac literature
in a literal sense. Neither of the two passages in Aphrahat yet shows any aware-
ness of Plato’s use of the two terms. In fact, it may well be that none of the
Syriac authors who do make use of his imagery were aware of its origin, for it is
likely that the usage entered Syriac through some translation from Greek where
(as in the two passages from Philo, cited above) there was no mention made of
Plato. One possible candidate for such a translation might be Eusebius’ Theo-
phania, preserved in the earliest dated Syriac manuscript, copied in Edessa in
November 411.9 At II.46 Eusebius observes that someone who treats fire, air or
water as a divinity “is like someone who is struck with wonder at the skill of
a master carpenter but attaches honour to the work resulting from him” or “if
one were to call a ship the quberniṭa, or the chariot of horses the henyoka.”10
Since, however, the imagery is so curtailed in this passage, it is much more
likely that it was some other work, with a more expansive use of the images,
which served as the bridge over which the imagery passed into the Syriac liter-
ary world.
Rather surprisingly, it is in the writings of the Syriac poets of the fifth and
early sixth century that one finds the imagery picked up before it entered the
consciousness of certain East Syriac monastic writers of the seventh and eighth
centuries. At this point it will be convenient to consider each image separately.
Before, however, turning to them, mention should be made of a passage in
John of Apamea’s Letter to Hesychius where he advises “Our mind (madʿan)
needs to be alert all the time, like a helmsman (quberniṭa) who is alert for the
preservation of his ship.”11 John was writing in the first half of the fifth century,
Butts, Language Change in the Wake of Empire. Syriac in its Greco-Roman Context (Winona
Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 62, 68, 72.
8 Cf. Michael Lattke, “Die griechischen Wörter im syrischen Text der Oden Salomos,” Aram
3 (1993): 285–302, here 292.
9 British Library Add. 12,150. The text was edited by Samuel Lee, Eusebius, Bishop of Cae-
sarea, on the Theophania. A Syriac Version (London, Society for the Publication of Oriental
Texts, 1842). In the same manuscript is Titus of Bostra’s work against the Manichaeans,
where two passages are of interest: at II.7, where the Greek, here surviving, has ἡνίοχος, the
Syriac translation renders as ‫ܙܐ‬熏‫ ;ܫܢ‬likewise at III.13, where ἡνίοχος and κυβερνήτης are
alternatives, evidently with the Phaedrus in mind; Paul-Hubert Poirier and Éric Crégheur,
Titi Bostrensis contra Manichaeos Libri IV, Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca 82 (Turn-
hout: Brepols, 2013).
10 Compare Paul Géhin, Évagre le Pontique. Chapitres des Disciples d’Évagre, SC 514 (Paris:
Cerf, 2007), no. 50 (praising the horses in place of the charioteer).
11 Sebastian Brock, ed., John of Apamea, Letter to Hesychius, Malpanuta d-abahata suryaye
d-ʿal ṣlota (Monastery of St Ephrem, Netherlands, 1988), 32 (section 7), translated in The
and would seem to have been someone who was also familiar with writings in
Greek, among which very probably the Macarian Homilies would be included.
The Greek Macarian corpus includes several passages reflecting Plato’s image
of the charioteer. Thus, for example in Homily 25 he tells how the nous, trained
by reason (logos) is the charioteer in charge of the chariot of body and soul who
needs to direct the natural stirrings of the thoughts in accordance with the will
of God, the aim being
so that the whole chariot of our soul and body, travelling rationally and
by the will of God on the royal road of the Scriptures may be enabled to
attain to the supernal city of the saints.12
Only a single reference to the helmsman, however, is to be found in the Greek

collection edited by Berthold: just as the helmsman is in control of a ship car-
rying much cargo and passengers, so the heart has the nous as κυβερνήτης,
with the conscience (συνείδησις) rebuking (unruly thoughts).13 As it happens,
in what is extant of the Syriac translation of the Macarian Homilies, it is only
the image of the helmsman that is found:
Sound words, as the Apostle says, raise up the intellect (hawna) like a good
quberniṭa from the billows of sin, and brings (his ship) close to God, deliv-
ering it from all the storms of the world.14
As is often the case, there is a lack of exact correspondence with anything in

the Greek corpus.
Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1987),
84. In his Letters (ed. Rignell, p. 49) John attests the rather rare secondary formation kuber-
niṭuta, “the role of helmsman.”
12 Heinz Berthold, ed., Makarios/Symeon. Reden und Briefe (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1973),
I, 238 (Homily 25.1.1); other similar passages can be found at I, 126 (Hom. 9.1.4), 166 (Hom.
14.16), and II, p. 28 (Hom. 33.1.4).
13 Berthold, Makarios/Symeon. Reden und Briefe, II, 27 (Hom. 33.1.4).
14 Werner Strothmann, Die syrische Übersetzung der Schriften des Makarios, Teil 1, Syrischer
Text, Göttinger Orientforschungen, Reihe; Syriaca 21 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1981), 155
(Hom. 2 of the collection under the name of Macarius of Alexandria). The hawna is like-
wise the quberniṭa in the Syriac translation of Nilus, cf. Paolo Bettiolo, Gli scritti siriaci di
Nilo il Solitario (Louvain-la-Neuve: Université catholique de Louvain, Institut orientaliste,
1983), 199, 222.
362 brock
1 Quberniṭa in the Poets of the Fifth and Sixth Century
Rather surprisingly it is Narsai who displays a penchant for the Platonic imag-
ery, attesting by far the most references to both the κυβερνήτης and (especially,
as we shall see) the ἡνίοχος. Narsai accords several different identities to the
quberniṭa. Closest in sense to Greek nous, but distinctively Syriac (and ulti-
mately of Jewish origin) is the yaṣra, “inclination,” “propensity.” In Hebrew
the yeṣer is the inclination which can be in either direction, towards good or
towards bad. In most Syriac writing yaṣra, where it occurs, is a negative term, it
is the inclination to what is wrong. Narsai is particularly fond of the term, using
it over 120 times.15 Often he too employs it in a negative sense, but in the two
passages where the yaṣra is described as the quberniṭa, it is neutral.
In Memra 13 Narsai offers a profusion of mixed images that is a characteristic
of many Syriac writers:
Love of money has battered the soul, like hail,

and the leaves of faith have dropped from mind (reʿyana);
like a storm, hateful things have blown on the sea of the intellect
(hawna)
and the helmsman, the skilled inclination ( yaṣra mhira) has trembled in
dismay.16
In another passage, having stated that half of a person is soul, he goes on:
In it (the half) the intellect (hawna) acquires discernment:

it has no limbs to serve as wings in its swiftness;
in it is the yaṣra, the skilled helmsman (quberniṭa mhira) amidst the
waves.17
On one occasion Narsai has the divine Will (remza), a term which functions
like the Homeric neuma of the gods, acting as the helmsman. In this pas-
sage the ship is nothing other than Noah’s Ark, tossed by storms; at it Narsai
exclaims:
15 On the yaṣra in Narsai, see also Adam Becker, “The ‘Evil Inclination’ of the Jews. The Syriac
Yatsra in Narsai’s Metrical Homilies for Lent,” JQR 106 (2016): 179–207; and D.G.K. Taylor
(forthcoming).
16 Alphonse Mingana, ed., Narsai doctoris Syri homiliae et carmina (Mosul: Typis Fratrum
Praedicatorum, 1905), I, 212.
17 Mingana, Narsai, II, 252.
The depth carried it (the Ark) and surging, it escorted it on its shoulder;
the waves venerated before it, yielding place for its course.
O ship that was without oars, which passed over sea and dry land,
and no (visible) helmsman guided it in the turbulence of the storms.
O vessel that was carrying the entire world,
whose voyage had no need of seamen (mallaḥe) to take it on its way:
The (divine) Will (remza) was its seaman,
(its) bidding (puqdana) the quberniṭa.
Instead of a star, (God’s) Volition (ṣebyana) was guiding it to harbour.
Its course was held fast by the anchor of faith, as Grace resided in it.18
Although of course there is no direct connection, one might compare Narsai’s

contemporary, Proclus, who spoke of the Demiurge guiding the kosmos like a
helmsman, holding fast to rudder and tiller.19
The image of the helmsman is of course suitable for many other contexts,
stripped of any association with Plato. Thus for Narsai in Memra 32 it is he
priest, as physician (asya), who takes on this role:
In the ship of the Church he (the priest) stands and warns night and
day,
guarding her from the harms of the wind/spirit (ruḥa) of evil men.
He is the helmsman (quberniṭa), greatly skilled amidst the storms:
he knows how to reach the entry to life (waʿda d-ḥayye) without end;
by means of the oars of the Spirit he guides the ships of rational beings
(mliluta),
directing their impetus to the haven of Life (lmen ḥayye), hidden on
high.20
Half a century or so after Narsai’s death the Acts of the Synod of 554 include a
letter urging bishops “to be like wise helmsmen and save their ships from the
violent storms and bring them to the haven of peace (lmen shayna)”; at the
same time they should also look after “the ships of their own souls.”21
18 Judith Frishman, The Ways and Means of the Divine Economy. An Edition, Translation and
Study of Six Biblical Homilies by Narsai (Ph.D. diss.; Leiden University, 1992), II, 38–39,
lines 509–523.
19 Proclus, In Cratylum 71, quoted in Sorabji, The Philosophy of the Commentators, 1, 387.
20 Mingana, Narsai, II, 147; in another Homily (46; II, p. 350) Narsai laments “Our human
race exists amid the storms of ignorance, there is no helmsman in our race who stills the
wrath, nor to pacify the anger of the passions.”
21 J.-B. Chabot, Synodicon Orientale (Paris: Klincksieck, 1902), 97.
364 brock
Before leaving Narsai one further passage where he uses quberniṭa is worth
mentioning: in the Homily no. 7, in a passage on “the ship of our mortality,” he
prays that God’s compassion (ḥnana) may be the quberniṭa for the voyage of
his life.
In sharp contrast to Narsai, his younger contemporary (and just possibly
his former student at the Persian School in Edessa), Jacob of Serugh only very
rarely employs the loanword quberniṭa, and never in connection with the men-
tal faculties.22 The various texts published under the name of Isaac of Antioch
likewise produce a very meagre harvest of passages where quberniṭa is used23—
and again, never in the context of Plato’s imagery.
2 Henyoka in the Poets of the Fifth/Sixth Century
Again it is Narsai who provides a profusion of references to Plato’s charioteer

who is given a number of different identities, often the same as those for the
helmsman. Thus the inclination, yaṣra, features once more. In Homily no. 15
Narsai describes the activities of “our yaṣra” and how it
is the one who rides upon the (soul’s) emotions (zawʿe), like the charioteer
with the horses; it causes the external senses to race—the eyes, ears and
tongue; at its bidding (remza) the inner (senses) are harnessed, the outer
ones are under its authority. If it wants, they travel in orderly fashion, if it
desires, (they do so) in a wild way.24
In another place, in Homily 16, it would appear that our yaṣra that is under the
control of the angels, who act as the charioteers:
Let them be like charioteers (henyoke), (riding) in its back,25

causing the impetus of its course to keep its eyes on the ground.
Let them look upon its course like spectators in the stadium.
22 Among the rare occurrences of the loanword is his memra on the Edessan martyrs,
Shmona and Gurya, William Cureton, ed., Ancient Syriac Documents (London: Williams
and Norgate, 1864), 100; there the cross is the quberniṭa that guided them. In Paul Bedjan
Homiliae selectae Mar Jacobi Sarugensis (Leipzig/Paris: Otto Harrassowitz, 1908), IV, 38, it
is the great Mystery (raza rabba) which serves as the quberniṭa for Noah’s Ark.
23 Paul Bedjan, ed., Homiliae S. Isaaci Syri Antiocheni (Leipzig/Paris: Otto Harrassowitz, 1903),
9: “Mark is your quberniṭa and he will bring you forth to harbour.”
24 Mingana, Narsai, I, 242.
25 The identity of the masculine suffix (“its”) is not entirely clear, but the yaṣra would seem
to fit best.
In his Homily on the Prodigal Son Narsai provides a lament by the prodi-
gal son on realizing his desperate condition; here, the hawna, as charioteer, is
closely associated with the yaṣra, madʿa and reʿyana:
He lamented and wept, accompanied by the sound of grievous groans;

he said to himself, Where are you, yaṣra who is the discerning part in
me?
Where are you, my intelligence (madaʿ( y)) that possesses/owns the wise
(decisions) of discernment?
For you were silent and failed to examine your abject state.
Where are you, my mind (reʿyan( y)), related to the Wakers26 who are
always alert?
For robbers have entered and plundered your wealth
and you have neither felt it or been aware of it.
Where are you, intellect (hawna), charioteer of the body, guider of the
senses?
For your swift course has come to an end and you have lost in the con-
test.
Where are you, soul, the fount that provides the body with the draft of
salvation?
For your wisdom has run dray, and the draft of your rational nature has
dried up.27
In the Homily on the Nativity the hawna seems to be the divine hawna,28 rather
than that of the Magi. Having pointed out that the Magi, on arriving in Beth-
lehem, did not ask the infant Christ “Where is your crown, and the insignia of
your royal authority?,” Narsai explains why:
The divine Will (remza) had put bridles of silence on the emotions of
(their) souls,
It kept them in order29 them so that they would not stumble in the
midst of doubts.
26 Or “Watchers,” ʿire (based on Dan 4:14), a standard term for angels, alongside malʾake.
27 Emmanuel Pataq Siman, ed., Narsaï. Cinq homélies sur les paraboles évangéliques (Paris:
Cariscript, 1984), 39 (II, 78–32).
28 Compare Jacob’s use of hawna rabba to denote God, e.g. Bedjan, Homiliae selectae, III,
89.
29 The printed text has w-ṭakkesw “set in order,” but this could be an error for wa-tkasw,
“restrained”; the same could apply to some of the other passages below.
366 brock
They30 raced gently under the charioteer, the Steady Mind (hawna
taqna),
they escorted the body on the chariot of King’s mount;
they openly honoured and worshiped Him who was hidden, who was
despised in (outward) appearance:
In the embodied one they saw the Spiritual One by means of the emo-
tions of the soul.31
Elsewhere we find the combination of hawna (intellect) and napsha (soul):

first, mention is made of the soul, and then, more specifically, the hawna fea-
tures as the charioteer. The opening line perhaps has the concept of the yeṣer
in the background.
In our soul there are placed the two, the good and the bad, equally;
the (soul) chooses according to its careful examination:
the soul rides on the body like the charioteer on the chariot,
and it guides a person by means of the reins of its hidden emotions.
The external senses race like horses in the stadium
while the hawna tightens and loosens (the reins) in his hands.
The body is harnessed and runs all the time to where the charioteer
desires.
The reʿyana, which had featured in the Prodigal Son’s lament, may also be
specifically identified as the charioteer. Thus in Homily 1, after describing God’s
dire instruction to Abraham to sacrifice his son (Gen 22), Narsai exclaims:32
O mind (reʿyana), fully harnessed for laborious tasks,

which has cast from itself the weight of the passions, as though unhar-
nessed!
How the yaṣra has bridled itself with the bridle of silence
and has become still and silent from travelling on a perturbed course!
Has his mind not contemplated, as it is accustomed,
about what this new matter is that the God of all has asked of me?
O man who is subject to passion (ḥashosha), who has harnessed his pas-
sions under his reʿyana,
30 Evidently their stirrings, or emotions.

31 Frederick McLeod, ed., Narsai’s Metrical Homilies on the Nativity, Epiphany, Passion, Res-
urrection and Ascension, PO 40.1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979), Memra I, lines 333–338.
It (reʿyana) has caused them to race in the stadium of his passible con-
dition (ḥashoshuteh).
O sluggish33 person, who has mounted, like a charioteer,
and has subdued the passions of his body and the emotions of his
soul.
In a number of passages the soul is the henyoka and the senses are the horses.
Let us hire contrition as an advocate (scholastikos),

and he will introduce our case before the Judge who examines all.
…
Let the senses be like horses for the (soul’s) action,
with it (standing) above them like a charioteer on a chariot;
let it cast the bridle of orderliness on the visible senses,
and let them travel well to the meeting place of love and faith.34
The senses are again the horses in a passage describing the life of those who
proclaim Christ:35
As upon horses (the preachers’) stirrings have rode upon their senses
and they have made orderly the course of the entire person so that it is
not disturbed:
they cast a bit (qeʾma < κῆμος) of peace in the mouth ⟨of⟩ the horses of
words,
and the soul rode like a charioteer on its back.
In an orderly way they allowed the eyes to look upon what is seen.
The charioteer can also be identified as discernment.36 Here (as elsewhere)

the nautical connotations of “haven,” “harbour” (lmena) are inappropriate and
have evidently been forgotten.
The mighty power of discernment (paroshuta) rides on (human) nature,

guiding it like the charioteer to where it wants.
The power of our will compels Love by the power of Its will,
and It draws him, acting like a guide, to the haven of peace.
33 Sic!, matina.
35 Ed. Patriarchal Press, II, 603.
36 Mingana, Narsai, II, 267; compare Titus of Bostra, contra Manichaeos II.7.
368 brock
A similar mingling of metaphors is found in another passage where the

senses are the horses:37
Like horses, his senses are yoked under (the soul’s) authority,
but (the body) does not understand what is the reason for its being har-
nessed.
Like a charioteer does (the soul’s) will ride on (a person’s) body,
and (the soul) causes the ship of his bodily nature to look in the direc-
tion that (the soul) wants.
The soul’s wider responsibility as charioteer is brought out in another passage

where it is the “wild world” that needs its guidance.38 The heading for this
Homily 39 is “On the excellence of the soul and how it makes provision for the
body, its home”:
Like a charioteer riding on the wild world,

holding it in order so that it does not run wild under its coursing
(helkateh),
the soul has harnessed the whole of creation under (a person’s) author-
ity
and it has caused him to sit like a king on a chariot
with the reins of its (the soul’s?) stirrings as he holds in his hands
heaven and earth,
and wherever he wishes he directs the will of his position of authority.39
The henyoka is also introduced by Narsai into his account of the ascension of
Elijah, where it is now the body of Elijah that is the charioteer:40
The bodily one was like a charioteer (riding) above the wind:
flesh took hold of the reins of fire, and was not scorched.
O bodily one, who rode the wind and bridled the fire!
In another memra the same scene is set, with Elisha as the onlooker:41

39 The identity of the various suffixes in this passage is not always clear.
41 Frishman, The Ways and Means, I, lines 295–299.
A wondrous sight did he see depicted above the earth,

a sort of fiery chariot racing in the air:
he saw horses of fire harnessed, along with wheels of fire,
and above them, standing, was the fiery charioteer:
he saw fire (standing) on fire, bound by reins of fire!
Not surprisingly, chariot and charioteer likewise feature in Narsai’s memra on

the Ascension. Here we meet again the remza, or the Father’s Will, as the char-
ioteer:42
The Hidden Will harnessed the Chariot with the reins of the wind
and It bridled the air for the Royal Rider who had conquered and caused
(others) to conquer.
It spread clouds of light as coverlets on the chariot,
and the King took His seat, while the remza placed a crown on His head.
Rational and dumb natures harnessed their voices beneath the chariot
and escorted the Hidden One in the Revealed One, the (divine) Being in
the (human) body.
The charioteer directed the horses of wind in the direction of the height
and taught them how to travel on a path hitherto untrodden.
The path hitherto untrodden is further explicated later in the memra: the ascen-
sion of Christ’s human body brings about salvation for humanity.43
A cloud, like a chariot, carried Him as He ascended,

the Hidden Will guided it, in place of a charioteer.
In like manner the clouds of light convey the bodies (of the just)
at that same bidding which has bridled the air and it escorted His body.
Finally, a surprising new identity for the charioteer is provided by Narsai in a

passage describing how David’s voice (evidently accompanying his lyre)
soothed the disturbed Saul (cf. 1Sam 16:23, 18:10):44
David cast upon the wild (Saul) bridles of love

and ordered the course of his emotions away from hateful actions.
42 McLeod, Narsai’s Metrical Homilies, V, lines 67–74.

43 McLeod, Narsai’s Metrical Homilies, V, lines 257–260.
44 Ed. Patriarchal Press, II, 777.
370 brock
Like a charioteer his voice rode over all utterances (lit. mouths)
causing them to race along the smooth path of the name of the Creator.
His voice was fair as he proclaimed in the ears of everyone,
“Hear this, all you peoples, and listen to my words” (Ps 49:1).
In contrast to Narsai, Jacob only rarely used the image of the charioteer. Al-
though the hawna again features as the charioteer, it is not controlling the
senses, but the narrative:45
Look how the hawna, like a charioteer, controls the bridles of the narra-
tives,
guiding them in an orderly way towards the audience.
Unlike the case in Narsai the senses are no longer the horses, but have them-
selves become charioteers:46
The five senses stand over (the body) like charioteers.
Evidently their failure to control the body on a massive scale led Jacob to
exclaim:47
Why does wickedness stand on the earth like a charioteer,

directing it where it wants towards evil actions?
In the memre published by Bedjan under the name of “Isaac of Antioch,” the
image of the henyoka features five times. Of particular interest is Homily 33
describing the workings of the “inner person” (barnasha da-lgaw). After an
extended passage describing the interior “limbs” and their individual roles,
Isaac concludes:48
Over everything the hawna hovers.

the (inner) senses are aware of reason (melta) to which they are bound;
the thought process (maḥshabta) takes its course by means of them,
(acting) like the charioteer on the chariot.
45 Bedjan, Homiliae Selectae, V, 290.

46 Bedjan, Homiliae selectae, III, 155.
47 Bedjan, Homiliae selectae, V, 848.
48 Bedjan, Homiliae S. Isaaci, 404. There is an Italian translation of this interesting homily by
Giuseppe Furlani, “La psicologia d’Isacco d’Antiochia,” GCFI 7 (1926): 241–253.
In Isaac’s Homily 65 it is the mind (reʿyana) which is the charioteer:49
Yoked are thought (ḥushshaba) and tongue, and with the recital (of s.
92:1), the understanding: over the four of them—like a chariot—reʿyana
stood as the charioteer.
It is probably again the reʿyana in another homily, where Isaac emphasizes that
in a fast all the members of the body should participate; he goes on50
Take a look at the master charioteer (quberniṭa umana): as he keeps the

harnessed horses
he slackens and tightens the reins so as to guide (the chariot) on an even
course.
Once we find the patriarch Joseph described as being like a charioteer:51
Joseph cast bridles on his limbs, and by his valour he restrained them;
he became like a charioteer who has held the horses firmly by the reins.
3 The Helmsman and the Charioteer in East Syriac Monastic Texts
Serving as a link in time between the poets of the fifth/sixth centuries and
the monastic texts, there is an extended passage in Barhadbeshabba Halwan’s
Cause of the Schools. Writing c. 600, Barhadbeshabba combines both images:52
The soul has three cognitive faculties (ḥayle yadoʿtane): intellect (hawna),
intelligence (tarʿita) and thought process (maḥshabta); from these three
49 Bedjan, Homiliae S. Isaaci, 819.

50 Bedjan, Homiliae S. Isaaci, 159. There is an Italian translation in Elias Chakhtoura, I mimre
ʿal Sawmo nel Corpus di Isacco d’Antiochia (Kaslik: USEK, 2016), 189–198 at 189.
51 Bedjan, Homiliae S. Isaaci, 223 (Hom. 19). The other passage with henyoka, on p. 499, com-
pares the person who does not know whether a road leads to the Kingdom or to Gehenna
with someone who has harnessed some headstrong horses and appoints a charioteer who
has no control over the bridle, and so does not know into what ravines he, along with the
horses and chariot, will end up.
52 Addai Scher, ed., Mar Barhadbeshabba, Cause de la foundation des écoles, PO 4.4 (1908):
27–28. Another English translation can be found in Adam Becker, Sources for the Study of
the School of Nisibis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008), 109–110 (with notes 124–
131).
372 brock
others are born: desire (reggta), wrath (ḥemta) and will (ṣebyana). The
mind (madʿa) is above all of them, like a wise charioteer and diligent
helmsman, who peers into the distance and steers the ship carrying the
treasure away from the rocks of error and the tempests of ignorance by
means of that first intellectual part that purifies the cognitive faculties of
the soul.
The other main context where the Platonic image turns up in Syriac literature
is in certain East Syriac monastic authors of the seventh and eighth century.
Nautical imagery is extremely common in monastic literature and in that con-
nection the loanword quberniṭa frequently occurs. For our present concerns,
however, it is only passages where it is the mind or intellect which is acting as
helmsman that are of relevance.53
More or less contemporary with Barhadbeshabba was Babai “the Great”
(d. 628), who wrote an extensive commentary on Evagrius’ Kephalaia Gnostica.
Commenting on Century 5, no. 5, where Evagrius states:
For the passible part of the soul, two great modes of conduct (dubbare)
purify, the cultivation of the Commandments, and the Intellect’s humility
and feeling of suffering (ḥashishuta).
In his comment, Babai introduces the quberniṭa:54
This part of the soul consists of desire and wrath, which have both
become sick through transgression of the law. … (A person) should recog-
nise his weakness, and like a quberniṭa, should be wary in his body and in
his soul.
Isaac of Nineveh provides a couple of passages where the mind or intellect are
compared to a quberniṭa:55
53 Thus I exclude the lengthy nautical analogy involving the helmsman in Gregory of Cyprus’
de Theoria sancta, ed. Irénée Hausherr, OCA 110 (Rome: Pont. institutum orientalium stu-
diorum, 1937), 60–64.
54 Wilhelm Frankenberg, ed., Evagrius Ponticus, Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft
der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.-hist. Kl. NS XII.2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1912), at f. 157b
(p. 320). The image of the helmsman features twice in Evagrius’ Letters, published in the
same volume, pp. 570 and 600.
55 Paul Bedjan, ed., Mar Isaacus Ninivita de perfectione religiosa (Paris/Leipzig: Otto Harras-
sowitz, 1909), 467 (Discourse 66). This is the Greek Discourse 55, Marcel Pirard, ed., Ἀββᾶ
Ἰσαὰκ τοῦ Σύρου Λόγοι ἀσκητικοί (Moni Iviron, Athos, 2012), 694.
For the discerning person, the aim of the valuable cultivation of stillness
(shelya) is the harbour of the Mysteries, towards which the mind (reʿyana)
gazes out … Just as the eyes of a quberniṭa that gaze up at the stars, so the
interior gaze of the solitary during the entire course of his journey, is set
upon the aim he took in his mind on the very first day that he gave himself
over to travel over the difficult ocean of stillness until he finds the pearl
for the sake of which he handed himself over to its unfathomable depths.
The same image appears again in Part II:56
When the contender (agonista < ἀγωνιστής, that is, the monk) consents to
meetings with the (outside) world, the soul immediately becomes weak-
ened. … Whenever the steersman intellect (hawna shanoza) encounters
the world, it resembles a helmsman (quberniṭa) who was sailing calmly
on the sea, with a gentle following wind blowing him towards harbour,
when all of a sudden he finds himself on a reef.
In the published texts that are available, the only other monastic author who
draws out this image of the helmsman in connection with the intellect is
ʿAbdishoʿ in the eighth century:57
At the time of prayer the soul is like a ship located in the heart of the sea.
The intellect (hawna) is like a helmsman standing on the ship, and the
emotions, like the winds, lead on the ship. Just as not all winds that blow
are useful for the course of the ship, so also with the stirrings that are set
in motion at the time of prayer, not all are useful for the ship’s journey,
to (ensure) that it reaches harbour without any fear and freed from the
waves; rather some are, and some are not, in that some (emotions) leave
an impression and form on the soul—and these are the ones which hin-
der the voyage of the ship of the helmsman intellect (hawna quberniṭa)
as it travels towards the harbour towards which his desire in gazing. But
some of the emotions that are stirred ⟨at the time of⟩ prayer are straight-
forward: these are the gentles breezes which direct the ship of the soul
over the waves to the harbour full of rest.
56 Sebastian P. Brock, ed., Isaac of Nineveh, “the Second Part,” Chapters IV–XLI, CSCO 554–555
(Louvain: Peeters, 1995), chapter 17, 12.
57 Alphonse Mingana, ed., Early Christian Mystics, Woodbrooke Studies 7 (Cambridge:
W. Heffer and Sons, 1934), 272 (translation, p. 163). ʿAbdishoʿ is usually considered to be
a name under which Joseph Hazzaya also wrote.
374 brock
References to the charioteer are, perhaps not surprisingly, much rarer in the
monastic literature. Although at one point Isaac describes the soul as the char-
ioteer who needs to be in control of the passions,58 elsewhere—appropriately
enough for a monastic setting—it is Satan who is the charioteer:59
(Spiritual) turbulence should be called the vehicle of Satan: Satan, like

a charioteer is in the habit of continually riding on it, taking with him a
crowd of the passions, making his entry into the wretched soul with the
pitfall of its turbulence.
4 By Way of Conclusion
Both the quberniṭa and the henyoka receive a number of different identities in
our Syriac authors. Thus the quberniṭa may be God or his remza, the hawna,
the reʿyana, the yaṣra, or the idealized priest. The first four overlap with the
same identities given to the henyoka, but here are several further additions,
the soul, discernment and thought process (maḥshabta), to which are added
divine compassion (ḥnana), David’s soothing voice, Joseph, and even Satan.
There seems to be no trace of any separation between the two terms, following
Iamblichus who, according to Hermias in his Commentary on the Phaedrus,
referred the kubernētēs to the soul and the hēniochos to the nous.60
Plato’s works, like those of Philo, were never translated into Syriac, and
all that does exist in Syriac under Plato’s name is not genuinely his.61 Nev-
ertheless it is pleasing to discover that the influence of this passage in the
Phaedrus reached certain Syriac writers, and most notably Narsai, in a totally
unrecognized way. Mutatis mutandis, the process was not dissimilar to that of
58 Bedjan, 285 (Discourse 37). This is Greek Discourse 29, ed. Pirard, Ἀββᾶ Ἰσαὰκ τοῦ Σύρου,
500.
59 Bedjan, 383 (Discourse 53). This is Greek Discourse 44, ed. Pirard, Ἀββᾶ Ἰσαὰκ τοῦ Σύρου,
624.
60 Paul Couvreur, ed., Hermiae Alexandrini in Platonis Scholia, BEHE 133.2 (Paris, É. Bouillon,
1901), 150 (ad Phaedrus 247c).
61 For Plato in Syriac, see H. Hugonnard-Roche, “Platon syriaque,” in Mohammad Ali Amir-
Moezzi et al., eds., Pensée grecque et sagesse d’orient. Hommage à Michel Tardieu (Turn-
hout: Brepols, 2009), 307–322, and Yuri Arzhanov, “Plato in Syriac Literature,” in Guido
Giglioni and Anna Corrias, eds., Brill Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Philos-
ophy (Leiden: Brill, 2015); also my “Some Pseudo-Platonic Curiosities,” in Rotraud Elisa-
beth Hansberger, M. Afifi al-Akiti, and Charles S.F. Burnett, eds., Medieval Arabic Thought.
Essays in Honour of Fritz Zimmermann, Warburg Institute Studies and Texts 4 (London:
Warburg Institute, 2012), 19–26.
the influence of Ephrem, totally unrecognized, on the mysterious author62 of

the Dionysian Corpus, as has so admirably been indicated by Bishop Alexan-
der Golitzin in his Et introibo ad altare Dei. The Mystagogy of Dionysius Are-
opagita, with Special Reference to its Predecessors in the Eastern Christian Tradi-
tion (Analekta Vlatadon 59; Thessaloniki, 1994), especially pp. 359–371.
62 For a new hypothesis concerning the work’s background, see Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi,
Dietro “Dionigi l’Areopagita.” La genesi e gli scopi del Corpus Dionysianum (Rome: Città
Nuova, 2018).
Index of Modern Authors
Aaron, D. 198 Bohak, G. 189

Aczel, A.D. 86 Boiadjiev, T. 275
Adams, H. 27, 96 Bond, H.K. 33, 36
Albeck, Ch. 76–77 Borges, J.L. 96
Alexopoulos, S. 327 Borret, M. 33, 245
Alfeyev, H. 157 Boss, S.J. 327
Amar, J.P. 228 Botvinnik, N.M. 193
Anatolios, K. 99, 104 Bovon, F. 331
Angel, A. 22, 178, 247 Box, G.H. 193
Arbel, D.V. 15 Boyarin, D. 54, 68, 70, 72–73, 82, 248, 253,
Arzhanov, Y. 374 257–258, 262
Ashbrook Harvey, S. 29, 226, 230, 233, 236 Bradshaw, P. 250
Ashton, J. 15 Braude, W. 195
Assmann, J. 182 Brintnall, K.L. 48
Aster, S.Z. 196–197 Brock, S.P. 1, 29, 67, 81–82, 198, 226–227, 233,
Aubineau, M. 102 358, 360, 373
Brocke, M.D. 250
Babcock, W. 115 Brody, R. 95
Balentine, S. 185 Brons, B. 295
Bardy, G. 147 Brooke, G.J. 182, 252, 309
Barker, M. 178–179, 182, 247 Brown, J.K. 177
Barnes, M.R. 2, 337, 354 Brown, P. 29
Bauckham, R. 58 Bruns, G.L. 68
Baur, Ch. 144, 147, 149–150 Bryer, A. 161
Beale, G. 181–183, 186, 188–189 Bucur, B.G. 14, 84, 202, 240, 256–258
Beaucamp, J. 270 Buell, D.K. 23
Beck, E. 228 Bundy, D.D. 80
Becker, A.H. 229, 235, 362, 371 Bunge, G. 213
Bedjan, P. 364–365, 370–372, 374 Bunta, S.N. 14, 66
Behr, J. 79, 118, 130–133, 135, 137, 139–141, 143, Bürke, G. 141
243, 248 Burkett, D. 52
Beierwaltes, W. 277 Burnett, C.S.F. 374
Bell, D.N. 355 Burns, D. 34, 327
Bettiolo, P. 361 Butler, C. 212
Betz, H.D. 45–46, 198 Butorac, D.D. 270, 276, 301, 326
Bienert, W.A. 276, 313 Butts, A. 360
Biles, J. 48
Bitton-Ashkelony, B. 233 Cacciari, A. 202
Black, M. 60 Calaway, J. 157
Blenkinsopp, J. 186 Canivet, P. 287
Bloch-Smith, E. 187 Capes, D. 36
Blosser, B. 129, 141 Caquot, A. 185
Blumenthal, H.J. 355 Cassin, E. 196
Bobichon, P. 21 Cavarnos, J. 339–340, 342–350, 352–357
Boccaccini, G. 53, 59, 63 Chabot, J.-B. 363
Boersma, H. 345, 357 Chadwick, H. 1, 192
378 index of modern authors
Chakhtoura, E. 371 Durkin, D. 92

Cherniss, H. 338–357 Dysinger, L. 209
Chialà, S. 163
Choat, M. 44 Eberhart, C.A. 194
Clark, E.A. 23, 27, 63, 178–179, 209, 311, 327, Ego, B. 183
354 Ehrman, B.D. 20, 120
Coakley, S. 67, 84, 278, 283 Elior, R. 15
Collins, J.J. 13, 198, 248, 260 Eliot, T.S. 139–140, 142
Colson, F.H. 181, 185, 253 Elm, S. 211
Compareti, M. 87 Emerson, R.W. 128, 132–133
Congar, Y. 68 Engelhardt, J.G.V. 268
Coogan, M.D. 187 Epstein, I. 72, 186, 197, 200
Corrias, A. 374 Esler, P. 232
Corrigan, K. 30, 211, 328 Evans, D.B. 275
Courtonne, Y. 71 Evans, E. 244–245
Crégheur, É. 360
Cross, F.M. 13, 183, 345 Ferguson, E. 81
Crouzel, H. 141, 245 Finkelstein, L. 249, 252–254
Cullmann, O. 63–64 Fiori, E. 269, 273–275, 285–286, 288, 302–
Cunningham, M. 161 303
Cureton, W. 364 Flacelière, R. 319
Curiello, G. 269 Fletcher-Louis, C. 53–55, 177–178, 182,
Czachesz, I. 17 190
Flusser, D. 241–242, 245, 250
Dahl, N.A. 198 Flynn, J.G. 96
Daley, B.E. 99, 331, 333 Fossum, J. 198
Daly, R.J. 129 Foster, P. 259
Dan, J. 69, 85, 88, 90 Fotinis, A.P. 342, 351
Daniélou, J. 313, 339–340, 347, 348 Frankenberg, W. 142, 213, 220, 372
Dashian, J. 329 Freedman, D.N. 52
Daube, D. 75, 251 Freedman, H. 77, 186–187, 197–198
Davila, J.R. 11, 12, 40, 43, 183, 248 Friedlander, G. 198–199
Davis, S.T. 260 Frishman, J. 79, 80–81, 363, 369
De Andia, Y. 102, 110 Frøyshov, S. 327
Dechow, J. 209 Fruchtel, L. 25
DeConick, A.D. 11, 13–17, 19, 21, 27–28, 30, Furlani, G. 370
32–34, 36, 45, 198 Furlong, M. 67
Delcor, M. 185 Fürst, A. 141
Dillon, J. 342, 345
Dodds, E.R. 268, 285, 301, 305 Gager, J.G. 27, 204
Donovan, M.A. 109 García Martínez, F. 183
Doran, R. 229–231 Garcia, H. 259
Dörrie, H. 339, 343 Gardner, I. 44
Doutreleau, L. 22–23, 101–102, 107–110, 112, Garsoian, N. 89
243 Gasparro, G.S. 141
Drijvers, H.J.W. 29, 81 Géhin, P. 205, 360
Drobner, H. 337 Gellhorn, E. 50
Droge, A. 204 Gendle, N. 106
Duffy, J. 277 Gerdon, I. 205
index of modern authors 379
Gerhards, A. 250 Hazlett, I. 151

Gessen, M. 86 Heal, K.S. 227, 236
Gieschen, C.A. 52, 56, 58–59, 61–62, 248 Healy, J.F. 182
Gifford, E.H. 191 Hedrick, C. 31, 34
Gigineishvili, L. 285 Heikel, I.A. 248
Giglioni, G. 374 Heine, R.E. 130, 217
Ginzberg, L. 199–200 Heinz, B. 361
Glatzer, N.N. 251 Hellholm, D. 34, 198
Goldschmidt, E.D. 251 Hemmerdinger, B. 108, 110
Golitzin, A.Y. 1–7, 11, 14, 65, 144, 163, 238– Henshke, D. 252
240, 263, 267, 269, 272, 274–275, 298, Hermans, T. 203
303, 306, 308, 326, 328, 375 Hilkens, A. 236
Goshen-Gottstein, A. 198 Hill, E. 80
Grabbe, L. 52 Hintze, A. 92
Grafton, A. 203 Hoffman, L.A. 250
Green, J.B. 154, 177, 186 Hollerich, M.J. 205
Greenfield, R.P.H. 156 Holliday, L.R. 138
Griffith, S.H. 227, 229, 233–234 Horn, C.B. 90, 230–231
Griggs, D. 156 Hugonnard-Roche, H. 270, 358, 374
Groen, B. 327 Hunter, D.G. 226
Gronau, K. 338, 346, 352–356 Hurowitz, V. 182, 186–187
Grondijs, L.H. 269 Hurtado, L.W. 36, 52, 55, 248
Gruen, E. 204
Guardini, R. 99 Ibrahim, G.Y. 79
Guillaumont, A. 203, 205–206, 210, 225 Idel, M. 70, 78, 248
Guillaumont, C. 225 Ilan, T. 92–93
Inowlocki, S. 202
Haase, W. 36
Hall, S.G. 27, 64, 250 Jacobs, I. 195–197
Hamid-Khani, S. 122 Jacobsen, A.-C. 128, 141
Hammer, R. 247 Jaeger, W. 344–345, 355
Hannah, D. 58 Janowitz, N. 43, 46, 72–73
Hansberger, R.E. 374 Janowski, B. 182
Hanson, P.D. 40 Jean-Aubry, G. 317
Hare, D.R.A. 52 Jeffery, P. 328
Harkins, F.T. 262 Jugie, M. 325, 332
Harl, M. 210
Harrington, M. 328 Kaczmarek, S. 275, 303
Harris, W.V. 220 Kalvesmaki, J. 209
Harrison, V.E.F. 68 Kaplan, A. 71
Hartel, W. 244 Kapriev, G. 275
Harvey, W.W. 67–68, 78, 236 Kapstein, I. 195
Hathaway, R. 269, 282, 305 Kaufmann, W. 116
Hausherr, I. 372 Kazhdan, A. 332
Hauspie, K. 257 Kazi, A.K. 96
Hawkes-Teeples, S. 327 Kearney, P. 186
Hayes, C.E. 72 Kendall, D. 260
Hayman, P. 71, 85, 247 Kiely, F. 50
Hayward, R. 182 Kijewska, A. 337
King, P.J. 187 Lewis, G.S. 16, 248

Kingsbury, J.D. 53 Lex, B. 50
Kiperwasser, R. 92 Leyerle, B. 210
Kiraz, G.A. 79 Lierman, J. 204
Kirby, A. 157 Lilla, S. 23, 269
Kitchen, R. 236 Lim, T.H. 248
Klijn, A.F.J. 192 Livingstone, E.A. 80
Knaake, J. 267 Lourié, B. 2–3, 6–7, 90, 163, 280, 334
Koch, H. 268, 302, 328 Louth, A. 308, 322, 326
Koder, J. 162–163 Ludlow, M. 357
Koester, C. 182 Luibhéid, C. 325
Kollamparampil, T. 237 Lundhaug, H. 21
Koltun-Fromm, N. 81 Lunt, H. 193, 253
Kosman, A. 198 Lust, J. 257
Kotter, B. 322, 331–332 Luttikhuizen, G.P. 29, 183
Kraemer, D. 78
Kramatz, A. 232 MacDermot, V. 192
Kripal, J.J. 48 MacDougall, B. 326
Krippner, S. 49–50 Macler, F. 335
Kroll, W. 317 MacRae, G. 186
Krüger, P. 274 Mahé, J.-P. 89
Kruisheer, D. 79 Maher, M. 199, 253
Kugel, J. 68, 73, 82, 91, 248 Maier, H.O. 26
Kühneweg, U. 313 Mainoldi, E.S. 268–270, 301, 375
Kulik, A. 191, 192–193 Majercik, R. 46
Malingrey, A.M. 319
La Porta, S. 329, 335 Mallarmé, S. 317
Ladner, G. 342, 349, 355 Maloney, G. 156, 168
Lall, J.H. 46 Mandell, A. 50
Lambden, S. 199 Manikowski, M. 337
Lamoreaux, J.C. 277, 328 Marcovich, M. 20, 24, 31–32, 34–35
Lange, C. 234 Marcus, J. 22, 45–46, 64–65, 144
Lankila, T. 269–270, 278–280, 287, 305, Marjanen, A. 29
326 Marrou, H.-I. 244
Lapin, H. 72 Martens, P. 141
Lattke, M. 360 Matt, D.C. 84
Laughlin, C.D. 50, 209 Matthews, E.G. 79–80
Lawson, R.P. 245 Maunder, C. 327
Layne, D.A. 270, 276, 301, 326 Mazzucchi, C.M. 269, 272, 305
Layton, B. 21–22, 27–28 McArthur, H. 78
Layton, R. 220 McDonald, L.M. 327
Lee, S. 327, 360 McGuckin, J.A. 156–157, 161–162, 164,
Lemke, W.E. 13 203
Leroy-Molinghen, A. 287 McGuire, A. 21
Lesses, R. 43 McLeod, F. 366, 369
Levenson, J. 180–182, 185–187 McManus, J. 50
Lévi, I. 88, 92–93 McNamara, P. 17, 50–51
Lévy, A. 306 Meeks, W.A. 252
Levy-Brightman, S. 138 Meistermann, B. 329
Mercier, C. 108–110, 112 Pachulia, D. 271

Meyer, F.E. 250 Pagels, E. 21
Meyer, M. 23, 44 Parry, D.W. 96, 183
Meyer, S. 182 Parry, K. 96, 183
Meyers, C. 187 Parsons, W.B. 17
Miller, P.D. 13 Patai, R. 182, 184
Miller, T.A. 36 Pearson, B.A. 32, 34
Mimouni, S.C. 333 Peradotto, J. 277
Mingana, A. 358, 362–364, 366–368, 373 Perczel, I. 267, 271, 274–284, 298, 300–302,
Mitchell, M.M. 150, 198 305–306, 313, 325–326
Mondor, H. 317 Perl, E.D. 318
Moosa, M. 230 Peroli, E. 337
Morray-Jones, C.R.A. 11, 13, 15, 17, 43, 44 Perrin, N. 177
Morris, P. 199 Perrone, L. 202
Mullett, M. 157 Perry, K. 276
Munoa, P.B. 37 Pesce, M. 242, 246, 263
Muraviev, A. 334 Pettis, J.B. 157
Murmelstein, B. 198 Philonenko, M. 193–194
Murray, R. 29, 68, 80, 324 Philonenko-Sayar, B. 193–194
Mursurillo, H. 37–40 Pines, S. 253
Pinggéra, K. 275
Najman, H. 73, 91, 247–248, 252 Plested, M. 144
Naumann, C. 92 Podolak, P. 277
Nautin, P. 244 Poincaré, H. 86
Nehamas, A. 117 Poirier, P.-H. 360
Nelson, D. 248 Pomerance, A. 12
Nemeroff, C.B. 49 Porte, J. 128, 132
Neusner, J. 76, 246 Possekel, U. 235
Newberg, A.B. 17, 49–51 Powers, S.M. 49–50
Newman, C.C. 248 Prinzivalli, E. 202
Newman, J.H. 73, 91, 154, 248 Provenza, A. 232
Nickelsburg, G.W.E. 52–53, 56–57, 60
Niculescu, V. 210, 225 Rainbow, P.A. 247
Niehoff, M.R. 204 Rambo, L.R. 16
Nietzsche, F. 116–117 Ramelli, I. 141
Nihan, C. 186 Rapp, C. 205
Noort, Ed 183 Rasimus, T. 30, 32
Nussbaum, M. 232 Rause, V. 50
Reynolds, B.E. 55–56, 59
Olson, D.C. 61 Rist, J.M. 337
Oppenheim, L. 196 Rondeau, M.-J. 205
Orbe, A. 113 Roques, R. 298, 310
Orlov, A.A. 1–3, 6, 11, 15, 62, 84, 163, 177, 188, Rorem, P. 277, 309, 325, 328
248, 252 Rousseau, A. 22–23, 101–102, 107–110, 112,
Osborn, E. 99 114, 210, 243
Osborne, C. 314 Rowland, C. 13, 15, 17, 40
Ostrovsky, A. 90 Rubin, N. 198
Outtier, B. 90, 228 Rubinkiewicz, R. 193, 253
Runia, D.T. 7, 204
Russell, D.S. 13, 40 Stager, L. 183

Russell, J.R. 85–87, 89–91, 95 Stählin, O. 25–26
Russell, N. 105 Stang, C.M. 128, 143, 209, 278, 283, 328
Ryan, L. 203 Stead, C. 340, 343
Steel, C. 273, 302, 358
Saachi, P. 53 Stern, D. 68, 82, 91–92, 95
Saffrey, H.D. 270–271, 288, 291 Stewart, C. 120, 209, 220
Sagnard, F. 36, 82 Stiglmayr, J. 268, 287, 302, 328
Saldarini, A.J. 246 Stone, M.E. 13, 89
Samuelian, T. 89 Strothmann, W. 361
Sawyer, D. 199 Stroumsa, G. 68, 259–260
Schäfer, C. 278 Struck, P.T. 316–318, 321, 323
Schäfer, P. 2, 12, 43, 67, 69, 70, 71, 83 Strunk, O. 232
Schaff, P. 101–102, 105–114 Stuckenbruck, L.T. 52, 252, 257
Scheck, T.P. 242–243 Studer, B. 99
Schmemann, A. 309 Suchla, R. 288, 304–305, 325
Schmidt, C. 192 Suggit, J.N. 244
Schmidt, M. 198 Swanson, R.W. 157
Schmithals, W. 13
Scholem, G. 68–70, 78, 83 Tabor, J.D. 44
Schomakers, B. 268, 276, 280, 285, 287, 326– Tam, J.C. 122
327 Tamcke, M. 275
Schott, J.M. 202 Taran, L. 343
Schweitzer, A. 15 Teugels, L. 78
Scott, M.S.M. 138, 278 Thackeray, H. 177–178, 180, 184, 189, 194
Segal, A.F. 2, 11, 15, 36, 70, 72–74, 76, 247, Theodor, J. 76, 77
257–258, 260 Thomas, R.G.C. 19, 23, 27–29, 139, 149–151,
Segonds, A.-P. 270 192, 198, 237, 242, 332–333
Seiler, I. 284, 291, 305 Thomassen, E. 21, 32
Shantz, C. 15, 17, 49 Thomson, R.W. 89
Shaw, G. 32, 34, 46–47, 310 Torrell, J.-P. 150
Shepardson, C. 82 Treitler, L. 232
Sherin, J.E. 49 Tremblay, R. 107
Shoemaker, S.J. 325–328, 331–334 Trigg, J.W. 202
Shutt, R. 189 Trypanis, K. 160
Sicherl, M. 277 Turcescu, L. 345
Sieber, J. 35 Turner, J.D. 21, 30, 32, 34, 157
Siman, E.P. 365 Tzamalikos, P. 138
Simon, M. 77, 185–186, 197–198, 236–237,
280, 329 Van Ruiten, J. 183
Sinkewicz, R.E. 215, 219, 322 VanderKam, J.C. 56–57, 60, 182
Smith, J.A. 232–233 Vaneeva, J.I. 193
Smith, J.Z. 198 Vanneste, J. 309
Smith, R. 23, 44 Verman, M. 84
Smith, W. 345 Vetter, P. 329
Sorabji, R. 358, 363 Vinzent, M. 227, 236, 279
Speer, A. 275 Visotzky, B.L. 82
Sperling, H. 185, 197 Vogt, E. 286
Stadelmann, L. 184 Voicu, S. 146
Vööbus, A. 29, 235, 239 Williams, M.A. 104

Voss, A. 46 Williams, M.H. 203
Voulet, P. 331–332 Williams, R. 122, 323–324
Winkelman, M. 50
Wahle, S. 250 Winkle, R. 194
Walck, L.W. 63 Wintermute, O.S. 247, 253
Waldstein, M. 31 Wise, M. 183
Walton, J. 182, 186 Wisse, F. 31
Watson, G. 341, 343 Witt, R.E. 342
Weimar, P. 186, 267 Wolfson, E. 71
Weinfeld, M. 185 Wykes, J.C. 84
Weinrich, W.C. 60
Weitzmann, M. 82 Yassif, E. 88, 93
Wenger, A. 332 Young, R.D. 202, 209–210, 256
Wenham, G. 183, 186, 188 Yuval, I.Y. 250, 253, 262
Werner, E. 13, 250, 262, 277, 344–345, 361 Yuzbashian, K. 90
Westerink, L.G. 270–271, 277, 288, 291
Whitaker, G.H. 181, 185, 253 Zachhuber, J. 345
White, R.A. 50 Zalta, E.N. 328
Whitney, W. 190–191, 193, 195, 197, 199–200 Zamagni, C. 202
Wickes, J. 227, 234, 236 Zehnder, M. 58
Wiley, H.L. 194, 276, 278, 283 Zeitlin, S. 249
Williams, D.H. 354
Index of Subjects
Aaron 183, 198, 216, 252, 359 chaos 31, 40, 187
Adam 14, 27–29, 70, 74–83, 105, 112, 123–125, Cherubim 4, 44
165, 183, 194, 197–200, 229, 235, 237, Chosen One 56–59
362, 371 commandments 170–171, 214–215, 217
Adamas 35 Constantinople 145–150, 156–159, 209, 211–
Aeons 35 212, 231, 259, 278, 282, 310, 329, 331–332,
Ahura Mazda 89 334
Anatolia 95, 330 cosmic serpent 192
Ancient of Days 57–59, 257–258, 260 Council of Chalcedon 280, 282, 325, 332
Angra Mainyu 89 Covinar 94
Antioch 20, 145, 147, 277, 280, 364, 370 Crete 329, 335
apatheia 25 Cyrus 86, 278–279
Aphropais 34
apocalypse 13, 257 Daughters of the Covenant 228
apocalypticism 2–4, 13 David 71, 119, 155, 222–224, 229, 245, 369–
apokatastasis 131, 137, 139, 140–142 370, 374
Apophantes 34 deification 101–106, 111, 113, 115, 117, 128–
archons 22, 32, 36 129, 131, 133, 135, 137–139, 141–143,
Areios Pagos 278 171
Arianism 272, 354 demiurge 244
Ark 362–364 demons 18, 32, 47, 129–130, 134, 190–191,
Armenian Genocide 330 207, 212, 214, 221–224, 301–302
Ascension 42, 366, 369 ditheism 79, 261
asceticism 3, 29, 48, 144, 156, 169, 170 Divine Chariot 6, 87, 91
Asia 70, 96, 123, 158, 280 divinization 99, 101–102
Assumption 325 dominion 57, 61, 319
Assyrians 247 Dormition 270, 278–280, 282, 287, 299, 306,
Astaphaeus 33 325–333, 335
Athos 1–2, 161, 372 dragon 178, 192
Baal 178 Easter 145, 249–250

baptism 16–21, 23–24, 29, 31, 125–126, 147 Ebion 245
Barbelo 34 Ebionites 244
Beliar 42 ecstatic experience 17, 21
Bethlehem 42, 92, 330 Eden 14, 27–29, 182–183, 186–188, 198–199
binitarianism 68, 79, 82–83, 247, 254, 257– Egypt 14, 29, 95, 182, 203, 205, 209–212, 217,
258, 260 243, 246, 248, 250–253, 256
blood 18, 20, 24, 41, 77, 115, 118–119, 124–125, Egyptians 191, 247
130, 189, 243, 251, 352 election 59, 145, 148
bridal chamber 22, 35 Elijah 244, 368
Elisha 369
Caesarea 70, 202–203, 205, 211, 231–232, Enoch 52–65, 70, 248
248, 281 enthronement 17, 61, 64
Cappadocia 74, 203, 211 Ephesus 29, 147, 274
Carthage 147, 244 epithumia 25–26
celibacy 14, 27, 29, 77 erotic imagery 40, 167, 313, 357
index of subjects 385
eschatology 13–14, 26–27, 29, 35, 41, 99–100, Jacob 38, 62, 370
102, 116 Janus 128, 142
Eucharist 126, 151, 308, 322–323, 325 Jerusalem 6, 27, 41, 44, 86, 88, 93, 156, 181–
Eve 27–29, 67, 74, 76–82, 105, 199–200 183, 186–188, 197, 200, 209, 212–215, 222,
Exodus 13, 161, 183, 185, 208, 216–218, 248, 259, 273, 280, 327–328, 330–332, 335
250, 252–254, 256 Jesus Christ 5, 15–21, 24–28, 31, 35–41, 43–
44, 47, 49, 51–52, 55–56, 58, 83, 88, 91,
Fall 129, 131–132, 150 100–101, 106, 108–111, 113, 115, 117–126,
Forethought 31 128, 133–136, 138, 142, 146–148, 151, 161,
Franciscans 150 163–165, 167, 170–171, 179, 194, 204, 211,
219, 221–222, 224–225, 234, 237, 240,
Gabriel, archangel 62, 245 243–245, 255–260, 280, 292, 296–297,
garment 14, 22, 28, 178, 180, 190, 196–197, 300–302, 308, 313, 315, 322, 334, 339,
200, 206 365–367, 369
Gehenna 371 Jethro 216–218, 222
Gethsemane 330 Job 90, 96, 195, 199, 247
glorification 99–103, 106, 111–115, 117 Jonah 101, 103
glory 12, 14–15, 20, 35, 38, 49, 57–58, 61, 71, Jordan 21
85, 99–100, 103, 106, 109–118, 120–121, Joseph 371, 374
122–123, 125–127, 136, 153, 165, 195–199,
217, 220, 237, 251, 253, 335–336 Kavod 4
Gnostics 34, 104, 107–108, 118 Kellia 203, 210–211, 218
Greece 1, 155, 256 Kronos 31
Hades 22, 31 Leviathan 178, 190–201

Head of Days 58, 60, 62 liturgy 3, 5–7, 152, 207, 226–227, 234–235,
Helios 46 240, 256, 263, 296–298, 309–310, 319
Hermes 31 Living Man 22
Herod 53, 186 Logos 164, 172–173, 202, 210, 245, 253, 254,
High Priest 177–183, 185, 187, 189, 190–191, 256, 300
193–195, 197–201, 204, 208, 223, 291 Lord of the Spirits 56–61, 63
Holy of Holies 4, 6, 182–184 Lyons 38–40, 99, 101, 103, 118, 123
Holy Spirit 23, 42, 44, 67–68, 81, 157, 164,
166, 219, 230–231, 252, 261, 293, 295, 301, Magi 86, 92, 365
304 Manicheans 146
Horaeus 33 mantra 86
Marcionites 231, 244
Ialdabaoth 33 martyrdom 36–41, 47, 121, 123–124, 148, 364
icon 1, 158 melammu 196–197
Imago Dei 129, 131 Merkavah 13, 43
immortality 20, 24, 88–89, 118–119, 126, 137, Messiah 21, 53, 57, 59, 63–64
325, 346, 348 Methuselah 198
Incarnation 99, 122, 128, 133, 147–148, 164, Michael, archangel 44, 61–62, 245, 254
172, 244–245, 255, 314, 321, 323 Milan 145
incorruptibility 101–102 mimesis 317, 320–321
interiorized apocalypticism 4 minim 73–76, 78, 81–83
Israel 3–5, 36, 58, 62, 66, 69, 77, 85–87, 96, molten sea 186–187, 190
183, 186, 188, 195, 204–205, 217–218, 240, monotheism 55, 63, 71, 247
245, 247–250, 252–253, 257, 259, 262 monsters 191, 196
386 index of subjects
Moses 77, 95, 121–122, 177, 184–185, 194, Raphael, archangel 62

202–206, 208–225, 243–244, 246, 248, Reformation 151, 153
250–253, 256, 259, 263, 309, 329, 347 resurrection 18, 26–27, 29, 36, 88, 90, 99–
Mother Earth 90 100, 102, 118, 123, 126, 131, 142, 256,
Mother Hubur 196 343–344
Mount of Olives 212 Rhodes 278–279
Mush 329–330 ritual 21, 23, 32, 34, 43–44, 50, 182–184
mysteries 13, 16, 24, 30, 37, 43, 47, 207, 238, Romans 16, 72, 135, 144–145, 204, 348
255 Rome 86, 121, 144–147, 153–154, 184, 211, 255,
mysticism 2–3, 7, 11–31, 33, 35–37, 39–49, 51, 273, 327, 337, 372, 375
66, 70, 83, 86, 144, 169, 173, 194, 199, 337
Sabaoth 33
Naassenes 35 sacrament 18, 23, 47
neo-patristic synthesis 3 Samaritans 252
Ninevites 101 Satan 42, 86, 90, 138, 198, 374
Nippur 182 Satana 95
Nitria 210–212, 215, 218 Saul 15, 369, 370
Noah 81, 198, 253, 362, 364 Scripture 80, 121, 150–152, 154–155, 187, 220,
246–248, 252, 261, 263, 346
Ophians 32, 199 sefirah 69, 71, 85
Origenism 132, 206, 209, 272, 274–275, 280, Seth 198
302, 306 Shekinah 68–71, 74, 77–78, 83, 185
Original Sin 325 Sheol 90, 246
ouroboros 191, 193 Sinai 161, 182, 186, 211, 216–217, 224–246, 248,
252–253, 258, 260, 273, 288, 332
paideia 23–24, 26, 48, 232 Sirmium 79
Pargod 14 Solomon 67–68, 181, 183, 187, 221, 249, 360
Patmos 40, 280 Son of Man 52–65, 178, 194, 257–258, 260
Pelagians 146–147 Sophia 22, 33, 35, 104, 159, 192, 310
Pentecost 145 Sumer 182
Perfect Man 21–22 Syria 14, 27, 29, 82
Phanuel, archangel 62
Pharaoh 136–137, 247 Tabernacle 180, 182, 184–186
platonism 269, 271, 273, 275, 277, 279, 281, Temple 3–7, 13–14, 52, 54–55, 59, 62–63, 118,
283, 285, 287, 289, 291, 293, 295, 297, 175, 179–190, 200–202, 209, 223, 240–
299, 301, 303, 305, 307 242, 245, 249, 252, 308
Pleroma 35, 108 Terek 95
Pneumatomachianism 260 Theophaneia School 2–3, 5–7, 163, 240,
possession 12, 15–17, 49, 166 263
prayer 22, 31–33, 39, 41, 45, 94, 152, 156, 163, theophany 5, 246, 315, 320
239, 293, 299, 308, 319, 323, 373 Theotokos 157, 159, 272, 325–328, 330, 333,
preexistence 58–59, 62 335
Prodigal Son 365–366 Therapeutae 14
Pronoia 33 theurgia 46
prophecy 21, 232, 280 Thrace 278
Protophanes 34 Tiamat 196–197
pulhu 196–197 Torah 5, 77, 185–186, 246
purgation 17, 36 Transfiguration 3, 118, 161, 270, 301
transmutation 20
index of subjects 387
Trinity 43, 80, 99, 141, 160, 208–210, 224, 233, Yahoel 248, 252
260, 273, 294, 311 yantra 86
two powers in heaven 258, 260–261
Zarathustra 86, 89, 91–92, 116
“Unique Cherub” circle 88, 90, 93, 96 Zipporah 77, 216
Zodiac 33
Valentinians 21–22, 244 Zoroaster 92
Virgin Mary 93–94, 325, 327–328, 335

Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism - Studies in - Andrei A - Orlov - 2020 - BRILL - 9789004429529 - Anna's Archive

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism - Studies in - Andrei A - Orlov - 2020 - BRILL - 9789004429529 - Anna's Archive

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vcs

Names: Golitzin, Alexander, honoree. | Orlov, Andrei A., 1960- editor.

Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

1 Traumatic Mysteries: Pathways of Mysticism among the Early

2 The Importance of the Parables of 1Enoch for Understanding the Son of

4 The Nativity of Ben Sira Reconsidered 85

5 Historical Memory and the Eschatological Vision of God’s Glory in

6 Flesh Invested with the Paternal Light: St Irenaeus on the

7 Flesh and Fire: Incarnation and Deification in Origen of

8 St John Chrysostom in the West 144

9 Divine Light and Salvific Illumination in St. Symeon the New

10 Leviathan’s Knot: The High Priest’s Sash as a Cosmological Symbol 177

11 Moses as the First Priest-Gnostikos in the Works of Evagrius of

12 Holy Sound: Preaching as Divine Song in Late Antique Syriac

14 Revisiting the Christian Platonism of Pseudo-Dionysius 267

15 Individual and Liturgical Piety in Dionysius the Areopagite 308

16 Ps.-Ps.-Dionysius on the Dormition of the Virgin Mary: The Armenian

17 The “Platonic” Character of Gregory of Nyssa’s Psychology: The Old

18 Charioteer and Helmsman: Some Distant Echoes of Plato’s Phaedrus in

Index of Modern Authors 377

GRMS Greek and Roman Musical Studies

OECT Oxford Early Christian Texts

WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes

Susan Ashbrook Harvey

Michel René Barnes

Robin Darling Young

“Theophaneia: Forum on the Jewish Roots of Orthodox Spirituality.” In The Theo-

This collection of essays is intended to honor Alexander Golitzin, a scholar

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004429536_002

Christian mysticism. Although widely known for his groundbreaking scholar-

1 Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism and Mysticism

One of the distinctive features of Golitzin’s scholarly approach, manifested

3 Alexander Golitzin, “Theophaneia: Forum of the Jewish Roots of Orthodox Spirituality,” in

their ancient custodians had a great appreciation of their Jewish heritage. He

2 Theophany and Transformation

In early Jewish biblical and pseudepigraphical accounts, divine theophanies

In the manifesto of the “Theophaneia School,” a theological forum, which

3 Jewish Temple and Christian Liturgy

Another distinctive feature of Golitzin’s scholarly approach is his keen atten-

11 Golitzin, “Theophaneia: Forum of the Jewish Roots of Orthodox Spirituality,” xvii.

ditions.23 Indeed, while the Platonic connections of the Corpus Dionysiacum

In the present volume, many of Alexander Golitzin’s former colleagues and

23 Lourié, “The Theophaneia School: An Ekphrasis of the Heavenly Temple,” xv.

Traumatic Mysteries: Pathways of Mysticism among

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004429536_003

And what mortal person is it who is able

2 Defining the Difference

7 DeConick, “What is Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism?,” 12–18.

10 Rev 1:1; Gal 1:11–12.

16 1Corinthians 2:16; cf. Romans 12:2; Philippians 2:1–5.

22 April D. DeConick, “Mysticism Before Mysticism: Teaching Christian Mysticism as a Histo-

chamber (Καθίδρυσον ἐν τῷ νυμφῶνί σου τὸ σπέρμα τοῦ φωτός). From me,

Mysticism as a sacrament in early Christianity is not confined to these exam-

Mysticism as sacrament is not the only pathway of mysticism developed in

60 Clement of Alexandria, Instructor 1.6. Miroslav Marcovich, ed., Clementis Alexandrini

passions, all in imitation of Christ.66 Clements understands the adoption of an

5 Mysticism as Daily Regimen

Closely related to mysticism as schooling is mysticism as daily regimen. In this

75 Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 6.17 (Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, 508–515); In-

85 Gospel of Thomas 22 (Layton, Nag Hammadi Codex II,2–7, 62–63).

The story here is of a Christian community in Syria whose members no